5 ms·

When you're a sheltered suburbanite nerd (yeah, even the "rural" ones) who will never have to truly worry about being in this situation, this is just an excitin

When you're a sheltered suburbanite nerd (yeah, even the "rural" ones) who will never have to truly worry about being in this situation, this is just an exciting news story to squabble over and smugly flounder about on your keyboard. Deplorable.

Waterluvian 1y ago
I feel more disgusted by the Americans who know this is wrong but do nothing. I have no patience for evil people, but the truly damned are all the Americans who know and sense better but do not or cannot act properly. If deporting U.S. CITIZEN CHILDREN does not send you to the streets with fire and fury, you are well and truly lost. So much damn talk over the decades I've been alive about patriotism and liberty from America, but when a moment unquestionably calls for action, it turns out Americans were just unserious cosplayers the whole damn time.
- wat10000 1y ago
  It’s worse than that. Far too many of us want this stuff. I understand the basic idea of how you fight an oppressive regime everyone hates. I have no idea how you go about fighting one that half the country supports. Protests aren’t going to fix that. Last time around, I could at least soothe myself with the idea that he only won because our electoral system is idiotic, and a lot of voters didn’t understand what they were voting for. This time? He won the most votes, and everyone had every opportunity to see what they were getting. I can only conclude that my countrymen are fucked in the head.
  - mystraline 1y ago
    > I understand the basic idea of how you fight an oppressive regime everyone hates. I have no idea how you go about fighting one that half the country supports. Protests aren’t going to fix that. In reality, around 22% of the US populace (not just voters, but everyone) voted for Trump. Similar voted for Harris. The rest didn't vote. I refuse to attribute justifications, since they are too numerous. But that is correct, peaceful protests like 50501 aren't going to do much. Their value is more networking and mutual aid creation/management. What does work, especially historically, is violence. As a historian, when you look at pivotal points in history, changes were only won after a LOT of violence was applied. The trick is that groups like 50501 are absolutely needed for a different reason. The governments cannot negotiate with 'terrorists', but can save face by negotiating with 'peaceful groups'. We see this recently with MLK and Malcolm X, Sinn Fein and IRA, Ghandi and dozens of separatist factions. I'm not publically advocating violence, but the more fascist they become, well, that will be inevitable. Different people and groups have different lines in the sand. We're already talking about breaching medical records for 'defectives' (autism) list, turning trans folk into non-humans, kidnapping/disappearing people off the street, tattle-tale emails and phone#s to report people, lebensraum (Canada, Greenland, etc), off-country concentration camps (CECOT), and more. And we're only 3 months in of 4 years. If I had the ability to get out, I would have. But I'm guessing that even the better off here also don't have the ability.
    - wat10000 1y ago
      I think you’re counting people who aren’t even eligible to vote. Among eligible voters, it was about 1/3rd to each of Trump, Harris, and staying home. I don’t give a lot of credit to those who stayed home. They also knew who Trump was and decided to let others make the choice on their behalf. I’m not confident that even violent action would change things when so many people are in favor of or at least ok with what’s going on. You’re not going to win a fight, so is the idea to win hearts and minds? I don’t see that working.
      - mystraline 1y ago
        > I think you’re counting people who aren’t even eligible to vote. Among eligible voters, it was about 1/3rd to each of Trump, Harris, and staying home. Oh, I absolutely am counting every human in the US, and not registered voters. Total counts are like 45% of the whole population voted. I chose total counts to get a better idea of density vs political affiliation since we have those at the district level. > I don’t give a lot of credit to those who stayed home. They also knew who Trump was and decided to let others make the choice on their behalf. Perhaps. Perhaps not. Usually, the back and forth between statist democrat and statist republican weren't that much diverging, although campaigns would portray the other side as baby-eaters. This is different. And even just 3 months, I'm seeing apolitical people come out of the woodwork and actually start being political. And even though I do vote, I get the idea of 'as long as politicians do decent, I don't care'. > I’m not confident that even violent action would change things when so many people are in favor of or at least ok with what’s going on. You’re not going to win a fight, so is the idea to win hearts and minds? I don’t see that working. I'm not seeing a fight ala lines of militia lining up firing in lines. I'm thinking what we're headed towards is much much more like Luigi. Or more historically, what we saw in France during WW2 - sabotage and hit-n-runs. And the battle lines are also pretty defined as well. Its going to be a fight between rural and cities. Like I said, if I had the ability to leave until the situation here comes to some semblance of sanity and stability (along with respect for human decency), I would leave. But at the moment, that is not an option for me. So instead, its a "what can I do to safeguard me and mine, for the foreseeable future?" (So far, my answer is: grow my own food, get to know local farmers and pay/trade, connect with local mutual aid orgs, become more self-sufficient, canning and food preservation. That sort of stuff. Goal is to just blend in, and help non-violently where I can.)
  - dragonwriter 1y ago
    > I understand the basic idea of how you fight an oppressive regime everyone hates. If everyone hates it, you only need to fight it if has external support. A regime needs considerable active support and even wider at least tacit support to operate; if everyone locally hates it, it cannot function as a regime (but, if it has sufficient external support, can perhaps function as an occupation, that you do have to fight.) > I have no idea how you go about fighting one that half the country supports. You fight it by actively seeking to make it one that has much less support, by means such as revealing to the people who would oppose various acts the things that it is doing that have been effectively concealed or misrepresented to them that they would oppose if they understood.
- whoknowsidont 1y ago
  >but the truly damned are all the Americans who know and sense better but do not or cannot act properly. MLK said it best: "the moderate who is more devoted to order than to justice, who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice" And even now you have people that think showing up with clever signs around the downtown parks / public areas on the weekend when all the government offices are closed are somehow going to get their message across. It's not enough. It was never enough. It wasn't enough for Vietnam or Iraq. It's definitely not going to be enough now. Americans are going to have to choose to do some uncomfortable and maybe even risky things to demonstrate our disapproval. Or we have to admit that for many of us, this is who we actually are as a country. It certainly is a good bit of the voting public. I don't think it's a mistake that in basically one generation we lied to the world about Iraq then elected a fascist twice. And at that point I don't think stern dissent is an effective or even morally correct course of action.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  - thechao 1y ago
    I’ve been in the get-out-the-vote space for 25 years, now. I’ve been politically active against gerrymandering nearly as long. My wife was tooth-and-nails in the redistricting fight (in Texas; Texas!) for ~10 years. Here’s my hands-on experience: at least half the people you meet are defective, to a scary extent, functionally in terms of empathy. Probably two thirds have serious executive functioning deficits. That means they can neither understand the plight of their fellows; and, even if they could, they could not generalize their own situation into a policy to help everyone in the same situation. EDIT: most people don’t vote. A disproportionate number that do are both empathetic, and high have high levels of executive functioning skills. The flip side of the coin are activated people who are missing one-or-the-other skills, but are voting out of some other errant ideology. I want to be clear that the distribution of voters is “both sides”: there are disgusting and enlightened voters on both sides of the spectrum. We’re all trapped in the box, together.
    - 1y ago
- neilv 1y ago
  Additional reasons for inaction: 1. They don't know what they can do that will be effective. 2. They don't want to be targeted as dissidents or non-loyalists to the regime. 3. They're drained by their individual economic situations and worries. 4. They're drained by severe disappointment in large swaths of the electorate, and in the failure of checks and balances. 5. Events are so upsetting that they're in denial or consciously avoiding it. It might be reassuring to see huge protests, but I wouldn't encourage individuals to do that anymore, because most of those people will be identified by the various surveillance technologies that we've built. (Half of the surveillance built by techbros, incidentally.) The identified can then be further suppressed with automation, and the barriers to doing that are much lower than mass physical roundups and concentration camps.
  - LorenPechtel 1y ago
    Worse, I believe anything the average citizen can do will either be ineffective or counterproductive. They are not going to listen to anything other than force and any outside force will simply provide a focus. Thus the force must come from within--law enforcement has to do their job. Or, if they don't, a military coup.
- s1artibartfast 1y ago
  Answering for myself, I don't see a movement that is strictly for due process, law, and order. Each side is so encumbered with baggage that I don't want to support them. One is breaking law and processes in egregious ways. The other thinks that law should not apply to illegal immigrants and even legal deportations are a due process violation.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  - whoknowsidont 1y ago
    >The other thinks that law should not apply to illegal immigrants and even legal deportations are a due process violation. Where? Who? You're just making this up.
    - s1artibartfast 1y ago
      Im entirely honest. There are many in this thread suggesting amnesty or non-enforcement. If I dont want to take part in an open boarder or anti-enforcement protest, where do I go? What do you think? Should all illegal immigrants be deported?
      - whoknowsidont 1y ago
        [flagged]
      - tomrod 1y ago
        It's spelled "border", and you'll note I spelled these out in this alleged suggestion as potential outcomes and associated as attributes. As Reagan was good for Amnesty, the right can find it in their ideals go support it.
        s1artibartfast 1y ago
        Regan got stabbed in the back , and I think that burnt a lot of good will and hope for such a solution. It worked for Regan because there was bipartisan support to enforce the law moving forward. I don't see that today so we get a yoyo effect
- mvdtnz 1y ago
  Americans have long since been lost. Some of their biggest protests in recent history have involved wearing vagina hats. They are an unserious people.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- anonfordays 1y ago
  >If deporting U.S. CITIZEN CHILDREN does not send you to the streets with fire and fury, you are well and truly lost. This ended up being fake news. Who would gain from enraging Americans with divisive fake news? Justice Department attorneys argued that it was in the child's best interest to remain in her mother's legal custody and suggested the child could return, writing, "V.M.L. is not prohibited from entering the United States." Trump administration officials told the court that the mother had informed ICE agents that she wanted to bring V.M.L. with her to Honduras, providing a handwritten note in Spanish that they said confirmed her wishes. https://www.newsweek.com/trump-administration-deport-us-children-2064896 https://www.newsweek.com/trump-administration-deport-us-chil...

Waterluvian 1y ago

I feel more disgusted by the Americans who know this is wrong but do nothing. I have no patience for evil people, but the truly damned are all the Americans who know and sense better but do not or cannot act properly. If deporting U.S. CITIZEN CHILDREN does not send you to the streets with fire and fury, you are well and truly lost. So much damn talk over the decades I've been alive about patriotism and liberty from America, but when a moment unquestionably calls for action, it turns out Americans were just unserious cosplayers the whole damn time.

wat10000 1y ago
It’s worse than that. Far too many of us want this stuff. I understand the basic idea of how you fight an oppressive regime everyone hates. I have no idea how you go about fighting one that half the country supports. Protests aren’t going to fix that. Last time around, I could at least soothe myself with the idea that he only won because our electoral system is idiotic, and a lot of voters didn’t understand what they were voting for. This time? He won the most votes, and everyone had every opportunity to see what they were getting. I can only conclude that my countrymen are fucked in the head.
- mystraline 1y ago
  > I understand the basic idea of how you fight an oppressive regime everyone hates. I have no idea how you go about fighting one that half the country supports. Protests aren’t going to fix that. In reality, around 22% of the US populace (not just voters, but everyone) voted for Trump. Similar voted for Harris. The rest didn't vote. I refuse to attribute justifications, since they are too numerous. But that is correct, peaceful protests like 50501 aren't going to do much. Their value is more networking and mutual aid creation/management. What does work, especially historically, is violence. As a historian, when you look at pivotal points in history, changes were only won after a LOT of violence was applied. The trick is that groups like 50501 are absolutely needed for a different reason. The governments cannot negotiate with 'terrorists', but can save face by negotiating with 'peaceful groups'. We see this recently with MLK and Malcolm X, Sinn Fein and IRA, Ghandi and dozens of separatist factions. I'm not publically advocating violence, but the more fascist they become, well, that will be inevitable. Different people and groups have different lines in the sand. We're already talking about breaching medical records for 'defectives' (autism) list, turning trans folk into non-humans, kidnapping/disappearing people off the street, tattle-tale emails and phone#s to report people, lebensraum (Canada, Greenland, etc), off-country concentration camps (CECOT), and more. And we're only 3 months in of 4 years. If I had the ability to get out, I would have. But I'm guessing that even the better off here also don't have the ability.
  - wat10000 1y ago
    I think you’re counting people who aren’t even eligible to vote. Among eligible voters, it was about 1/3rd to each of Trump, Harris, and staying home. I don’t give a lot of credit to those who stayed home. They also knew who Trump was and decided to let others make the choice on their behalf. I’m not confident that even violent action would change things when so many people are in favor of or at least ok with what’s going on. You’re not going to win a fight, so is the idea to win hearts and minds? I don’t see that working.
    - mystraline 1y ago
      > I think you’re counting people who aren’t even eligible to vote. Among eligible voters, it was about 1/3rd to each of Trump, Harris, and staying home. Oh, I absolutely am counting every human in the US, and not registered voters. Total counts are like 45% of the whole population voted. I chose total counts to get a better idea of density vs political affiliation since we have those at the district level. > I don’t give a lot of credit to those who stayed home. They also knew who Trump was and decided to let others make the choice on their behalf. Perhaps. Perhaps not. Usually, the back and forth between statist democrat and statist republican weren't that much diverging, although campaigns would portray the other side as baby-eaters. This is different. And even just 3 months, I'm seeing apolitical people come out of the woodwork and actually start being political. And even though I do vote, I get the idea of 'as long as politicians do decent, I don't care'. > I’m not confident that even violent action would change things when so many people are in favor of or at least ok with what’s going on. You’re not going to win a fight, so is the idea to win hearts and minds? I don’t see that working. I'm not seeing a fight ala lines of militia lining up firing in lines. I'm thinking what we're headed towards is much much more like Luigi. Or more historically, what we saw in France during WW2 - sabotage and hit-n-runs. And the battle lines are also pretty defined as well. Its going to be a fight between rural and cities. Like I said, if I had the ability to leave until the situation here comes to some semblance of sanity and stability (along with respect for human decency), I would leave. But at the moment, that is not an option for me. So instead, its a "what can I do to safeguard me and mine, for the foreseeable future?" (So far, my answer is: grow my own food, get to know local farmers and pay/trade, connect with local mutual aid orgs, become more self-sufficient, canning and food preservation. That sort of stuff. Goal is to just blend in, and help non-violently where I can.)
- dragonwriter 1y ago
  > I understand the basic idea of how you fight an oppressive regime everyone hates. If everyone hates it, you only need to fight it if has external support. A regime needs considerable active support and even wider at least tacit support to operate; if everyone locally hates it, it cannot function as a regime (but, if it has sufficient external support, can perhaps function as an occupation, that you do have to fight.) > I have no idea how you go about fighting one that half the country supports. You fight it by actively seeking to make it one that has much less support, by means such as revealing to the people who would oppose various acts the things that it is doing that have been effectively concealed or misrepresented to them that they would oppose if they understood.
whoknowsidont 1y ago
>but the truly damned are all the Americans who know and sense better but do not or cannot act properly. MLK said it best: "the moderate who is more devoted to order than to justice, who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice" And even now you have people that think showing up with clever signs around the downtown parks / public areas on the weekend when all the government offices are closed are somehow going to get their message across. It's not enough. It was never enough. It wasn't enough for Vietnam or Iraq. It's definitely not going to be enough now. Americans are going to have to choose to do some uncomfortable and maybe even risky things to demonstrate our disapproval. Or we have to admit that for many of us, this is who we actually are as a country. It certainly is a good bit of the voting public. I don't think it's a mistake that in basically one generation we lied to the world about Iraq then elected a fascist twice. And at that point I don't think stern dissent is an effective or even morally correct course of action.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- thechao 1y ago
  I’ve been in the get-out-the-vote space for 25 years, now. I’ve been politically active against gerrymandering nearly as long. My wife was tooth-and-nails in the redistricting fight (in Texas; Texas!) for ~10 years. Here’s my hands-on experience: at least half the people you meet are defective, to a scary extent, functionally in terms of empathy. Probably two thirds have serious executive functioning deficits. That means they can neither understand the plight of their fellows; and, even if they could, they could not generalize their own situation into a policy to help everyone in the same situation. EDIT: most people don’t vote. A disproportionate number that do are both empathetic, and high have high levels of executive functioning skills. The flip side of the coin are activated people who are missing one-or-the-other skills, but are voting out of some other errant ideology. I want to be clear that the distribution of voters is “both sides”: there are disgusting and enlightened voters on both sides of the spectrum. We’re all trapped in the box, together.
  - 1y ago
neilv 1y ago
Additional reasons for inaction: 1. They don't know what they can do that will be effective. 2. They don't want to be targeted as dissidents or non-loyalists to the regime. 3. They're drained by their individual economic situations and worries. 4. They're drained by severe disappointment in large swaths of the electorate, and in the failure of checks and balances. 5. Events are so upsetting that they're in denial or consciously avoiding it. It might be reassuring to see huge protests, but I wouldn't encourage individuals to do that anymore, because most of those people will be identified by the various surveillance technologies that we've built. (Half of the surveillance built by techbros, incidentally.) The identified can then be further suppressed with automation, and the barriers to doing that are much lower than mass physical roundups and concentration camps.
- LorenPechtel 1y ago
  Worse, I believe anything the average citizen can do will either be ineffective or counterproductive. They are not going to listen to anything other than force and any outside force will simply provide a focus. Thus the force must come from within--law enforcement has to do their job. Or, if they don't, a military coup.
s1artibartfast 1y ago
Answering for myself, I don't see a movement that is strictly for due process, law, and order. Each side is so encumbered with baggage that I don't want to support them. One is breaking law and processes in egregious ways. The other thinks that law should not apply to illegal immigrants and even legal deportations are a due process violation.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- whoknowsidont 1y ago
  >The other thinks that law should not apply to illegal immigrants and even legal deportations are a due process violation. Where? Who? You're just making this up.
  - s1artibartfast 1y ago
    Im entirely honest. There are many in this thread suggesting amnesty or non-enforcement. If I dont want to take part in an open boarder or anti-enforcement protest, where do I go? What do you think? Should all illegal immigrants be deported?
    - whoknowsidont 1y ago
      [flagged]
    - tomrod 1y ago
      It's spelled "border", and you'll note I spelled these out in this alleged suggestion as potential outcomes and associated as attributes. As Reagan was good for Amnesty, the right can find it in their ideals go support it.
      - s1artibartfast 1y ago
        Regan got stabbed in the back , and I think that burnt a lot of good will and hope for such a solution. It worked for Regan because there was bipartisan support to enforce the law moving forward. I don't see that today so we get a yoyo effect
mvdtnz 1y ago
Americans have long since been lost. Some of their biggest protests in recent history have involved wearing vagina hats. They are an unserious people.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
anonfordays 1y ago
>If deporting U.S. CITIZEN CHILDREN does not send you to the streets with fire and fury, you are well and truly lost. This ended up being fake news. Who would gain from enraging Americans with divisive fake news? Justice Department attorneys argued that it was in the child's best interest to remain in her mother's legal custody and suggested the child could return, writing, "V.M.L. is not prohibited from entering the United States." Trump administration officials told the court that the mother had informed ICE agents that she wanted to bring V.M.L. with her to Honduras, providing a handwritten note in Spanish that they said confirmed her wishes. https://www.newsweek.com/trump-administration-deport-us-children-2064896 https://www.newsweek.com/trump-administration-deport-us-chil...