4 ms·

I grew up in the states when I was younger, always feeling some closeness to Americans even after I moved back to Europe. With all that goes on it has changed.

by koe123 6mo ago

I grew up in the states when I was younger, always feeling some closeness to Americans even after I moved back to Europe. With all that goes on it has changed. Recently I sat on a plane near some Americans discussing their holidays here, and I noticed I felt contempt. Sitting their with insane privilege as their government torches the world. Individuals remain individuals, and one really ought not to be prejudice. However the lack of resistance I see in in the “land of the free” as their “democratic” institutions collapse just makes me believe they never cared at all. In France cars are torched if the pension age is raised. In America the rise facism apparently doesnt matter to them.

n8cpdx 6mo ago
[flagged]
- Cthulhu_ 6mo ago
  It's probably a bit more nuanced than "half this, half that"; when you look at the facts, most voters aren't that extremist. A lot of votes vote one way or the other because they would simply never vote for the other. This is why the swing voters / swing states are so important in the US, because only a few million are flexible enough to switch sides. Of course the core issue is that there's a two party system; while I'm sure that in a healthy democracy the current republican and democrat parties would be the bigger ones, they wouldn't have a majority.
  - drcongo 6mo ago
    > A lot of votes vote one way or the other because they would simply never vote for the other. This, for me, is the crux. Politics is treated like a team sport in the US, you pick your side and cheer them on no matter what. And team sports in America are even more bananas - you grow up supporting the Brooklyn Dodgers and a few years later they're 2.5k miles away with a new name. This seems a perfect example of what's happened / happening to the Republican Party - it's not the same party any more, but everyone who tied their entire personality to cheering for the red team is still cheering for it as it burns the country to the ground. I predict that inside ten years it will have also had the name change and probably be run out of Florida or somewhere.
    - enaaem 6mo ago
      I think it's more like a cult than a team sport. Sports fans figure out really fast if their manager is shit.
    - 0xDEAFBEAD 6mo ago
      That's not exactly accurate as a diagnosis. Many former Bush/McCain/Romney staffers endorsed Kamala Harris: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/kamala-harris-endorsement-bush-mccain-romney-staff/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/kamala-harris-endorsement-bush-... Trump caused a big political realignment actually.
  - HarHarVeryFunny 6mo ago
    > This is why the swing voters / swing states are so important in the US, because only a few million are flexible enough to switch sides. Of course if the USA was an actual democracy, electing it's president by popular vote, then this would not be an issue - every vote would count to tip the balance in favor of who the people wanted to elect, not just the votes of the 20% fortunate enough to live in a "swing" state.
  - cma 6mo ago
    Parliamentary systems with more coalition involved instead of two party first-past-the-post can foster extremes too, like we're seeing in Israel.
- KronisLV 6mo ago
  > The other half has been ringing the alarm bells for well over a decade; it seems to make no difference. I feel like the issue there is that alarm bells in of themselves solve nothing. I won't extend that argument to one of its obvious conclusions, but instead I will say that efforts to attack education and critical thinking skills all contribute to people being susceptible to their democracy being corrupted and robbed blind - so having an educated populace with a sense of integrity and respect of human rights would help!
  - wookmaster 6mo ago
    How would you solve it ? Alarm bells don’t work, half the time we do walkouts and protests they frame us as violent and just focus on some kids doing something stupid as if that’s what the protest was.
    - ziml77 6mo ago
      Any incidents of looting or fires? The protests were just an excuse for people to steal and destroy. Nothing bad happens? The protest was just a cute little parade. They just come up with excuses to dismiss protests because it's inconvenient to even consider that the protesters concerns are valid and need to be addressed by making actual changes.
    - scottyah 6mo ago
      Eventually, people have to get into politics and deal with the BS to make things right. It's hard and thankless, and so far it seems the Left has only been able to get people in who are personally profiting a lot. That's why almost none are willing to rock the boat in a meaningful way, and they get no support. Just like how DOGE failed in getting most of its cost cutting recommendations approved because they were stopped by the Right.
mettamage 6mo ago
From my small bubble it's not that. I'm Dutch, married to an American who now knows enough Dutch such that we can treat it as a secret language when we're in the US. My family in law seems to swing slightly republican. As a Dutchie, I could get some answers because I'm too naive not to talk about politics. So I got to probe a bit. What I simply found was that they'd say "I can't trust the news, none of it. Not CNN, not Fox News, nothing". Then I'd say "well in the Netherlands, I'd argue that while news outlets have their bias, you can trust them on basic factual reporting". She looked at me with a stare that I could only describe as "oh but honey, you're too young and naive to understand". To which I thought "you don't know the Netherlands. We're not perfect but we're nowhere near as deranged as what I'm seeing here". I think that explains a lot of it for some people. The trust in the media, all media, is completely broken. Trump has how many fellonies now? Can't trust it. Kamala is doing what now? All talk. DOGE is fixing the government? I fucking hope so! But can't trust the damn news. Whether they do or don't, they are always burning money, god damn bureaucrats. I feel that's the mindset that my family in law has.
- JumpCrisscross 6mo ago
  Out of curisoity, what is your wife's take? My running hypothesis has been the trust breakdown arises from social-media overexposure driving lazy nihilism, which in turn gave free reign to a uniquely-corrupt class of politicians. But I'm not sure how to neutrally evaluate that.
  - virgildotcodes 6mo ago
    I think the collapse of public trust was very intentional, and the result of a much longer term effort than social media. The most famous examples are likely the tobacco industry spreading misinformation through self-funded studies and experts, and the fossil fuel industry doing the same to seed doubt about climate change. But of course we can think of countless examples of entire industries and individual large corporations pushing out misleading bullshit, threatening or outright killing journalists and activists to cover up their catastrophic fuckups and their chronic conscious excretion of negative externalities. This has all of course been going on since the dawn of time, but to focus on the last century in the US, we've seen all sorts of corporations and coalitions of rich and powerful people push misinformation into nearly every sector of our society - universities, science, journalism, politics, etc. in order to undermine confidence in shared facts, corrupt people's ability to discern whether or not something is fundamentally true, and sow confusion so that they can continue to operate in perpetuity in this chaotic maelstrom of doubt. Lots of capture of government towards these ends as well, we can look at the concomitant constant cuts to education in order to weaken people's understanding of the world and ability to think critically. The revocation of the Fairness Doctrine was probably a step change, and Trump represents the sharpest recent escalation of all this. From day one, he's done everything he can to shred any collective notion of shared objective truth. Anything he doesn't like is fake news, and the idea that the media is lying, scientists are lying, experts are lying, and institutions are lying, he has spread so fucking successfully through society, to the point where Americans no longer have anything like a shared sense of reality. It seems like we're being reduced to tribes who are organized primarily around faith in various charismatic individuals. I think this is fundamentally the worst thing he's done, because it lays the foundation for virtually every other conceivable and inconceivable abuse. If people can't even agree on what is happening, we're fucked. People and institutions in power can do anything they want to whoever they want, because the public has lost their ability to even recognize the danger posed to them collectively and thus mount any resistance based on a shared sense of reality. Social media has definitely famously accelerated aspects of this like the fragmentation and the spread/magnification of fringe worldviews through echo chambers, but I think it's just one (and maybe this is controversial, but I'd be willing to be generous enough to think the 20something year old creators were too stupid to conceive of these long term consequences at first, but who knows, maybe not) element in a much longer and more intentional, malicious war against the many for the benefit of the few.
jorvi 6mo ago
> In France cars are torched if the pension age is raised. This is not something to be proud of. You guys are giving yourself loaned freebies, retiring 5+ (!) years earlier than countries like BeNeLux and Germany, and are pretty much expecting the EU to eventually pick up the pieces which will drag us all down. Edit: always lovely when HN downvotes truths :)
- the_gipsy 6mo ago
  That's bullshit. Pensions are not a zero-sum game, and other countries don't have to pay for them. It just doesn't make sense to delay retirement while youth unemployment is such a big problem. We ALL should be fighting like France, in many aspects.
  - jorvi 6mo ago
    Other countries don't directly pay for the pensions, but France is staring into a giant fiscal abyss because of their low retirement age (and other generous social benefits). Any attempt to change those results in the country being taken hostage by rioters, thus nothing changes. At some point France will be in too deep shit and will look to the EU to cover for them. We will all pay for that. And it is deeply unfair because other countries their citizens have accepted later retirement and more frugal benefits to keep their countries fiscally healthy. France could cover the fiscal hole in other ways, but taxing corporations and wealth at a higher rate also consistently ends up being blocked. And each year the hole gets deeper.
    - snakeboy 6mo ago
      > Any attempt to change those results in the country being taken hostage by rioters, thus nothing changes. Your theory doesn't actually match with reality, given that Macron's retirement reform was passed into law despite protests. As currently enacted, the age of retirement in France will progressively increase from 62 until reaching 64 in 2030.
      - jorvi 6mo ago
sterlind 6mo ago
not all of us are just "sitting here with insane privilege." it's quite dangerous for some of us right now. I'm trans. this Administration does not like us. after Charlie Kirk's murder, things got legitimately scary. Musk was retweeting people who called us "deranged bioweapons" who needed to be "forcibly institutionalized." NSPM-7 is surveilling and infiltrating trans organizations. the Heritage Foundation proposed labeling us as "ideological extremists," in the same category as neo-Nazis. if I'm arrested, I'll go to a men's prison where I'll likely be given to a violent inmate as his cellmate to "pacify" him (V-coding.) so yeah, I keep my head down. a lot of Jews kept their heads down in Germany in the '30s, you know? and just like then, it doesn't seem like other countries are too keen on taking us in as refugees. I hope that changes if things get bleak.
- JonChesterfield 6mo ago
  Get out seems an important priority. Good luck
- koe123 6mo ago
  You make a good point, I’m sorry to generalize.
- bmn__ 6mo ago
  [flagged]
  - koe123 6mo ago
    I suppose this could be rage bait, but would you justify the violence that the poster is afraid of also if someone is “ilk” of the other side of the aisle? E.g. white nationalist types? Does being “extreme” justify extra-judicial violence?
    - bmn__ 6mo ago
      > justify the violence "If you make reasonable discourse impossible, then unreasonable discourse becomes inevitable." What do you stand to gain in running defence for the trans radicals on the fringe? They hold extremely unpopular views. If it comes to them being violently suppressed by the state, they will have no one from the out-group and not even the moderates from the in-group coming to aid, and will have only themselves to blame for this. If you do not see it this way, then chances are you are in an echo chamber and are prevented from perceiving reality correctly.
TomGarden 6mo ago
I a European who spent the last decade in America and I'm not sure I'd call Americans privileged compared to Europe. With money being the one means you have to be treated well in society, comparing it to Europe, America feels like the hunger games. Want healthcare (ie surviving)? Healthy food? To own your house? Welcome to the games
- wiseowise 6mo ago
  Europe doesn’t wage war right now. Their point is that Americans are talking about vacation while their troops invade and destroy Iran.
  - wallst07 6mo ago
    OP needs to read up on war history and the US. Spoiler, it's been this way since WWII.
  - bbkane 6mo ago
    As a middle-class American, I don't feel like I have much input into the Iran war. I've voted, I've signed a few petitions, and I'm open to more suggestions for how I can stop the war, but I don't really think I can do much else- protest somewhere I suppose and hope that's helpful somehow As a European, how do you influence your government?
  - scottyah 6mo ago
    Ukraine?
    - wiseowise 6mo ago
      Started by Russia against Ukraine and without active participation of Europe. US literally attacked Iran to support Israel. If we go by analogies, Ukraine should've waged genocidal war against Belarus and eventually started bombing Russia and then Europe joined and they bombed Russia together.
hirako2000 6mo ago
You felt contempt, can you imagine if you were Iraqi, Afghan, Syrian, Russian, Sudanese, Lebanese, Iranian, should I mention it: Palestinian.
- hersko 6mo ago
  They apparently all love america. They try to come here as soon as they get a chance....
  - hirako2000 6mo ago
    Peasants also would accept to part of the king's court. Why not be the king even. Doesn't change OP's point on contempt.
0xDEAFBEAD 6mo ago
>However the lack of resistance I see in in the “land of the free” as their “democratic” institutions collapse just makes me believe they never cared at all. Largest protests in US history just in the past year: 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... >insane privilege My sister and brother recently graduated from college, have been searching for jobs for over 6 months, they can't find anything. They're politically liberal Californians.
- cplusplus6382 6mo ago
  Largest parade not protest. There was not a single actionable demand from that parade.
  - seanclayton 6mo ago
    Where are you? Are you doing anything at all? Is commenting on Hacker News and taking a paycheck and maybe donating to some politicians all you're willing to do?
  - 0xDEAFBEAD 6mo ago
    I think you're being disingenuous with this sort of definition gerrymandering. "No Kings" is obviously a demand to stop the authoritarian behavior.
    - Jcampuzano2 6mo ago
      A simple "demand" against this political administration is a waste of time.
      - 0xDEAFBEAD 6mo ago
        Research shows nonviolent protests are more effective. https://www.npr.org/2026/02/12/nx-s1-5712280/minnesota-ice-surge-ends https://www.npr.org/2026/02/12/nx-s1-5712280/minnesota-ice-s...
vslira 6mo ago
> In France cars are torched if the pension age is raised. Democracy is… an organized group toppling decisions made by popularly elected representatives within the confines of the law?

by koe123 6mo ago

n8cpdx 6mo ago

[flagged]

Cthulhu_ 6mo ago
It's probably a bit more nuanced than "half this, half that"; when you look at the facts, most voters aren't that extremist. A lot of votes vote one way or the other because they would simply never vote for the other. This is why the swing voters / swing states are so important in the US, because only a few million are flexible enough to switch sides. Of course the core issue is that there's a two party system; while I'm sure that in a healthy democracy the current republican and democrat parties would be the bigger ones, they wouldn't have a majority.
- drcongo 6mo ago
  > A lot of votes vote one way or the other because they would simply never vote for the other. This, for me, is the crux. Politics is treated like a team sport in the US, you pick your side and cheer them on no matter what. And team sports in America are even more bananas - you grow up supporting the Brooklyn Dodgers and a few years later they're 2.5k miles away with a new name. This seems a perfect example of what's happened / happening to the Republican Party - it's not the same party any more, but everyone who tied their entire personality to cheering for the red team is still cheering for it as it burns the country to the ground. I predict that inside ten years it will have also had the name change and probably be run out of Florida or somewhere.
  - enaaem 6mo ago
    I think it's more like a cult than a team sport. Sports fans figure out really fast if their manager is shit.
  - 0xDEAFBEAD 6mo ago
    That's not exactly accurate as a diagnosis. Many former Bush/McCain/Romney staffers endorsed Kamala Harris: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/kamala-harris-endorsement-bush-mccain-romney-staff/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/kamala-harris-endorsement-bush-... Trump caused a big political realignment actually.
- HarHarVeryFunny 6mo ago
  > This is why the swing voters / swing states are so important in the US, because only a few million are flexible enough to switch sides. Of course if the USA was an actual democracy, electing it's president by popular vote, then this would not be an issue - every vote would count to tip the balance in favor of who the people wanted to elect, not just the votes of the 20% fortunate enough to live in a "swing" state.
- cma 6mo ago
  Parliamentary systems with more coalition involved instead of two party first-past-the-post can foster extremes too, like we're seeing in Israel.
KronisLV 6mo ago
> The other half has been ringing the alarm bells for well over a decade; it seems to make no difference. I feel like the issue there is that alarm bells in of themselves solve nothing. I won't extend that argument to one of its obvious conclusions, but instead I will say that efforts to attack education and critical thinking skills all contribute to people being susceptible to their democracy being corrupted and robbed blind - so having an educated populace with a sense of integrity and respect of human rights would help!
- wookmaster 6mo ago
  How would you solve it ? Alarm bells don’t work, half the time we do walkouts and protests they frame us as violent and just focus on some kids doing something stupid as if that’s what the protest was.
  - ziml77 6mo ago
    Any incidents of looting or fires? The protests were just an excuse for people to steal and destroy. Nothing bad happens? The protest was just a cute little parade. They just come up with excuses to dismiss protests because it's inconvenient to even consider that the protesters concerns are valid and need to be addressed by making actual changes.
  - scottyah 6mo ago
    Eventually, people have to get into politics and deal with the BS to make things right. It's hard and thankless, and so far it seems the Left has only been able to get people in who are personally profiting a lot. That's why almost none are willing to rock the boat in a meaningful way, and they get no support. Just like how DOGE failed in getting most of its cost cutting recommendations approved because they were stopped by the Right.

mettamage 6mo ago

From my small bubble it's not that. I'm Dutch, married to an American who now knows enough Dutch such that we can treat it as a secret language when we're in the US. My family in law seems to swing slightly republican. As a Dutchie, I could get some answers because I'm too naive not to talk about politics. So I got to probe a bit. What I simply found was that they'd say "I can't trust the news, none of it. Not CNN, not Fox News, nothing". Then I'd say "well in the Netherlands, I'd argue that while news outlets have their bias, you can trust them on basic factual reporting". She looked at me with a stare that I could only describe as "oh but honey, you're too young and naive to understand". To which I thought "you don't know the Netherlands. We're not perfect but we're nowhere near as deranged as what I'm seeing here". I think that explains a lot of it for some people. The trust in the media, all media, is completely broken. Trump has how many fellonies now? Can't trust it. Kamala is doing what now? All talk. DOGE is fixing the government? I fucking hope so! But can't trust the damn news. Whether they do or don't, they are always burning money, god damn bureaucrats. I feel that's the mindset that my family in law has.

JumpCrisscross 6mo ago
Out of curisoity, what is your wife's take? My running hypothesis has been the trust breakdown arises from social-media overexposure driving lazy nihilism, which in turn gave free reign to a uniquely-corrupt class of politicians. But I'm not sure how to neutrally evaluate that.
- virgildotcodes 6mo ago
  I think the collapse of public trust was very intentional, and the result of a much longer term effort than social media. The most famous examples are likely the tobacco industry spreading misinformation through self-funded studies and experts, and the fossil fuel industry doing the same to seed doubt about climate change. But of course we can think of countless examples of entire industries and individual large corporations pushing out misleading bullshit, threatening or outright killing journalists and activists to cover up their catastrophic fuckups and their chronic conscious excretion of negative externalities. This has all of course been going on since the dawn of time, but to focus on the last century in the US, we've seen all sorts of corporations and coalitions of rich and powerful people push misinformation into nearly every sector of our society - universities, science, journalism, politics, etc. in order to undermine confidence in shared facts, corrupt people's ability to discern whether or not something is fundamentally true, and sow confusion so that they can continue to operate in perpetuity in this chaotic maelstrom of doubt. Lots of capture of government towards these ends as well, we can look at the concomitant constant cuts to education in order to weaken people's understanding of the world and ability to think critically. The revocation of the Fairness Doctrine was probably a step change, and Trump represents the sharpest recent escalation of all this. From day one, he's done everything he can to shred any collective notion of shared objective truth. Anything he doesn't like is fake news, and the idea that the media is lying, scientists are lying, experts are lying, and institutions are lying, he has spread so fucking successfully through society, to the point where Americans no longer have anything like a shared sense of reality. It seems like we're being reduced to tribes who are organized primarily around faith in various charismatic individuals. I think this is fundamentally the worst thing he's done, because it lays the foundation for virtually every other conceivable and inconceivable abuse. If people can't even agree on what is happening, we're fucked. People and institutions in power can do anything they want to whoever they want, because the public has lost their ability to even recognize the danger posed to them collectively and thus mount any resistance based on a shared sense of reality. Social media has definitely famously accelerated aspects of this like the fragmentation and the spread/magnification of fringe worldviews through echo chambers, but I think it's just one (and maybe this is controversial, but I'd be willing to be generous enough to think the 20something year old creators were too stupid to conceive of these long term consequences at first, but who knows, maybe not) element in a much longer and more intentional, malicious war against the many for the benefit of the few.

jorvi 6mo ago

> In France cars are torched if the pension age is raised. This is not something to be proud of. You guys are giving yourself loaned freebies, retiring 5+ (!) years earlier than countries like BeNeLux and Germany, and are pretty much expecting the EU to eventually pick up the pieces which will drag us all down. Edit: always lovely when HN downvotes truths :)

the_gipsy 6mo ago
That's bullshit. Pensions are not a zero-sum game, and other countries don't have to pay for them. It just doesn't make sense to delay retirement while youth unemployment is such a big problem. We ALL should be fighting like France, in many aspects.
- jorvi 6mo ago
  Other countries don't directly pay for the pensions, but France is staring into a giant fiscal abyss because of their low retirement age (and other generous social benefits). Any attempt to change those results in the country being taken hostage by rioters, thus nothing changes. At some point France will be in too deep shit and will look to the EU to cover for them. We will all pay for that. And it is deeply unfair because other countries their citizens have accepted later retirement and more frugal benefits to keep their countries fiscally healthy. France could cover the fiscal hole in other ways, but taxing corporations and wealth at a higher rate also consistently ends up being blocked. And each year the hole gets deeper.
  - snakeboy 6mo ago
    > Any attempt to change those results in the country being taken hostage by rioters, thus nothing changes. Your theory doesn't actually match with reality, given that Macron's retirement reform was passed into law despite protests. As currently enacted, the age of retirement in France will progressively increase from 62 until reaching 64 in 2030.
    - jorvi 6mo ago

sterlind 6mo ago

not all of us are just "sitting here with insane privilege." it's quite dangerous for some of us right now. I'm trans. this Administration does not like us. after Charlie Kirk's murder, things got legitimately scary. Musk was retweeting people who called us "deranged bioweapons" who needed to be "forcibly institutionalized." NSPM-7 is surveilling and infiltrating trans organizations. the Heritage Foundation proposed labeling us as "ideological extremists," in the same category as neo-Nazis. if I'm arrested, I'll go to a men's prison where I'll likely be given to a violent inmate as his cellmate to "pacify" him (V-coding.) so yeah, I keep my head down. a lot of Jews kept their heads down in Germany in the '30s, you know? and just like then, it doesn't seem like other countries are too keen on taking us in as refugees. I hope that changes if things get bleak.

JonChesterfield 6mo ago
Get out seems an important priority. Good luck
koe123 6mo ago
You make a good point, I’m sorry to generalize.
bmn__ 6mo ago
[flagged]
- koe123 6mo ago
  I suppose this could be rage bait, but would you justify the violence that the poster is afraid of also if someone is “ilk” of the other side of the aisle? E.g. white nationalist types? Does being “extreme” justify extra-judicial violence?
  - bmn__ 6mo ago
    > justify the violence "If you make reasonable discourse impossible, then unreasonable discourse becomes inevitable." What do you stand to gain in running defence for the trans radicals on the fringe? They hold extremely unpopular views. If it comes to them being violently suppressed by the state, they will have no one from the out-group and not even the moderates from the in-group coming to aid, and will have only themselves to blame for this. If you do not see it this way, then chances are you are in an echo chamber and are prevented from perceiving reality correctly.

TomGarden 6mo ago

I a European who spent the last decade in America and I'm not sure I'd call Americans privileged compared to Europe. With money being the one means you have to be treated well in society, comparing it to Europe, America feels like the hunger games. Want healthcare (ie surviving)? Healthy food? To own your house? Welcome to the games

wiseowise 6mo ago
Europe doesn’t wage war right now. Their point is that Americans are talking about vacation while their troops invade and destroy Iran.
- wallst07 6mo ago
  OP needs to read up on war history and the US. Spoiler, it's been this way since WWII.
- bbkane 6mo ago
  As a middle-class American, I don't feel like I have much input into the Iran war. I've voted, I've signed a few petitions, and I'm open to more suggestions for how I can stop the war, but I don't really think I can do much else- protest somewhere I suppose and hope that's helpful somehow As a European, how do you influence your government?
- scottyah 6mo ago
  Ukraine?
  - wiseowise 6mo ago
    Started by Russia against Ukraine and without active participation of Europe. US literally attacked Iran to support Israel. If we go by analogies, Ukraine should've waged genocidal war against Belarus and eventually started bombing Russia and then Europe joined and they bombed Russia together.

hirako2000 6mo ago

You felt contempt, can you imagine if you were Iraqi, Afghan, Syrian, Russian, Sudanese, Lebanese, Iranian, should I mention it: Palestinian.

hersko 6mo ago
They apparently all love america. They try to come here as soon as they get a chance....
- hirako2000 6mo ago
  Peasants also would accept to part of the king's court. Why not be the king even. Doesn't change OP's point on contempt.

0xDEAFBEAD 6mo ago

>However the lack of resistance I see in in the “land of the free” as their “democratic” institutions collapse just makes me believe they never cared at all. Largest protests in US history just in the past year: 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... >insane privilege My sister and brother recently graduated from college, have been searching for jobs for over 6 months, they can't find anything. They're politically liberal Californians.

cplusplus6382 6mo ago
Largest parade not protest. There was not a single actionable demand from that parade.
- seanclayton 6mo ago
  Where are you? Are you doing anything at all? Is commenting on Hacker News and taking a paycheck and maybe donating to some politicians all you're willing to do?
- 0xDEAFBEAD 6mo ago
  I think you're being disingenuous with this sort of definition gerrymandering. "No Kings" is obviously a demand to stop the authoritarian behavior.
  - Jcampuzano2 6mo ago
    A simple "demand" against this political administration is a waste of time.
    - 0xDEAFBEAD 6mo ago
      Research shows nonviolent protests are more effective. https://www.npr.org/2026/02/12/nx-s1-5712280/minnesota-ice-surge-ends https://www.npr.org/2026/02/12/nx-s1-5712280/minnesota-ice-s...

vslira 6mo ago

> In France cars are torched if the pension age is raised. Democracy is… an organized group toppling decisions made by popularly elected representatives within the confines of the law?