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Thank you for taking the time to write out your feelings on this. Its clear that this is weighing on you heavily (As I assume for many people). >I say the act

Thank you for taking the time to write out your feelings on this. Its clear that this is weighing on you heavily (As I assume for many people). >I say the act of shooting US citizens is the action. Marial Law is the point of no return. We could have backtracked on Renee Good with a proper reaction, but instead we get gaslighting and doubling down. As well as autohritain slogans like "one of us, all of you". To use the Venezuela metaphor above, this is the shooting of the ship. Yeah for people observing in Europe this situation is beyond crazy. The standards have dropped so far in the US. Historically the state has enacted violence against people in the past. Ask George Floyd..ask the countless minorities that have had to live with this fear. I'm reminded of the time I volunteered for Bernie Sanders in 2020. I was very dismayed when he lost South Carolina. He was on a massive winning streak and even seeing TV pundits who were all for the establishment start to get scared and cry on TV about Bernie winning made me realize that maybe he could pull it off! When he collapsed in South Carolina, I asked friends in both Georgia and South Carolina as to why he cannot seem to get through to older black folks. They were the main reason he collapsed and broke sharply against their kids who were for Bernie. They went for Biden in huge numbers despite the fact that Bernie was on the front lines fighting for civil rights (He is that old). Turns out, they all had this learned helplessness where Biden promised that nothing would fundamentally change. That to them was better then taking a risk to go against the system (By supporting Sanders) and potentially losing the few breadcrumbs they fought for over their lives. The craziness you see is decades of the state molding its people to accept this reality. Its crazier to think that as of a few years ago old about half the country does not even have a passport. They haven't even seen how the rest of the world operates (either because they cant afford it or the continent is so big that it has every season you could possibly want). Regarding third parties, I'm not too sure that will happen. There was a massive online push among some of the most leftist people in 2020 to push for a Green party vote. Howie Hawkins and the party have done a commendable job in such an unforgiving system to raise the stature of the green party but even as of today they are not on all state ballots. In 2020 their numbers were terrible. I think we are forced to reckon that either we take over the Democratic party like Trump did the Republican party or there is no way forward. The parties have decades (centuries?) of deep institutional knowledge of each area of the country that it would take an unprecedented event for a third party to take over. I blame the Democratic party for 2024. They played games with their voters in the hopes of avoiding a repeat of 2020. I'm convinced that they knew all along that Biden was not a long term prospect and they always intended to put Kamala in bypassing the primary. Kamala was on track to lose her own home state in the 2020 primary and dropped out early to avoid the potential career ending embarrassment. Due to the party wanting her as the pick they put her in place as the VP and then she spent four years completely fumbling her one assignment: immigration. They then put this person at the top of the ticket and expect pissed off voters to come out for her?! The party was already polling in the low 30s during the biden years. They deserve the majority of the blame for playing games.

johnnyanmac 9mo ago
That's really sad to hear as someone who looks up to his grandfather, someone in the Deep South during the Civil Rights movement as he did his little parts. I know pain is inevitable (and already has occured), so I'm not afraid of a little more to get the country back on a track of actual progressivism. We still have a storm to do through, so I hope we can have more of this discusion after that dust settles (and not have the community flag all efforts to have such talks in a more subtle space). But I do think 2 unprecedented events happening in real tome may shift some thinking after said storm. 1. Seeing Trump's reign and the several tepid responses will definitely radicalise America on both ends. But the response from the right over the year on the micro scale is definitely changing. I'm not exactly in a red area, but even I saw all the trump memorabilia in 2024. That's pretty much all disappeared over the 2nd half of the year. 2. Simply put, those older folk will die out. People who held the reigns for an unprecedentedly long time. I just hope Millenial did not learn this same helplessness as they (including I) had to spend their 20s or 30s navigating this hellhole of a government. And Gen Z especially can't even get a boot on the ground as the country tells them they are lazy and entitled. Saying "you will be be jobless and like it" isn't how you create learn helplessness. It may not be in 2032 or even 2036, but as long as we don't forget these feelings, we can push to something unprecedented yet again.

johnnyanmac 9mo ago

That's really sad to hear as someone who looks up to his grandfather, someone in the Deep South during the Civil Rights movement as he did his little parts. I know pain is inevitable (and already has occured), so I'm not afraid of a little more to get the country back on a track of actual progressivism. We still have a storm to do through, so I hope we can have more of this discusion after that dust settles (and not have the community flag all efforts to have such talks in a more subtle space). But I do think 2 unprecedented events happening in real tome may shift some thinking after said storm. 1. Seeing Trump's reign and the several tepid responses will definitely radicalise America on both ends. But the response from the right over the year on the micro scale is definitely changing. I'm not exactly in a red area, but even I saw all the trump memorabilia in 2024. That's pretty much all disappeared over the 2nd half of the year. 2. Simply put, those older folk will die out. People who held the reigns for an unprecedentedly long time. I just hope Millenial did not learn this same helplessness as they (including I) had to spend their 20s or 30s navigating this hellhole of a government. And Gen Z especially can't even get a boot on the ground as the country tells them they are lazy and entitled. Saying "you will be be jobless and like it" isn't how you create learn helplessness. It may not be in 2032 or even 2036, but as long as we don't forget these feelings, we can push to something unprecedented yet again.