this post was submitted on 21 Oct 2023
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See? But that's the thought process that I find baffling. Because I can't find an American who doesn't claim to be dissatisfied, so... how do you land in that mix of conformism, where you don't think you can take political action of any sort to address it, but also extremism, where you think the logical endgame is full on armed conflict?
How do you massage a whole continent-sized country's psyche into just sitting there and taking it right up until the point where you start shooting people? I'm not even French and even I can see the glaring hole full of mass protesting right in the middle of that crap.
And hey, not to spoil any big secrets, but the US is literally the only democracy that hasn't rewritten its constitution fundamentally since its creation. You guys know that's allowed, right? Go argue for a proportional system or a parliamentary system or something. I mean, you guys could try doing something at all before deciding that it's full-on purge time.
Because if we try to change anything, we run the (very high) risk of losing our jobs, then our homes, and ending up on the streets. If you have a way to get over 300 million people all on the same page for a general strike, who are all willing to risk losing their income, please let me know.
I don't think this really addresses the question. Revolution provides even more of an economic disruption?
Keep in mind the OP is not an American. They don't have the context.
I mean... as the other guy says below, if you're considering revolution surely a general strike is a notch below that level of commitment.
But also, I've lived through multiple general strikes. I don't know what to tell you, a party and a bunch of unions called for them, people followed them at will. Some changed stuff, others didn't. Nobody lost their jobs or homes, among other things because it's illegal to retalliate against a strike. Because, you know, we had strikes about that.
We're not even a particularly old democracy, we were an outright fascist country less than a century ago. My dad remembers running away from fascist police when he was in college. I don't know what to tell you.
Part of the problem for major reforms is that large areas of empty land have more power than the will of the people to get things through the Senate.
In the US there are only two parties of any real significance. General strike is something neither of them would ever call for. Only about 10.1% of US workers have a union.
In the US, strike retaliation, while technically illegal, is very rarely enforced. When it is, the penalty is ... they have to undo the thing they did and were penalized for. No fine, no concession, no additional monitoring, and there was always the (very good) chance they'd get away with it.
Sadly, in a country where guns are common and unions aren't, armed revolt is just more imaginable than a general strike.
well said, thank you.
We are protesting. So far we've been at best ignored, and at worst...
You've probably seen what our police are like.
I'm American and it's never made much sense to me, either.
Afaik it's fundementally 5 forces.
Finally, this unwillingness to be the first to bite the bullet. Inevitably, the first people to start off these grassroots movements are going to get the shortest end of the stick. They are people sacrificing their free time and economic security for a movement that begs others to do the same.
It's a massive risk.
FWIW, I do recognize all of those from the outside looking in.
I also recognize that you have so few protections that action is riskier than it is here, where protesting can't be legally retaliated against and there are actual labor protections in place that make effecting change easier. Which in turn is part of the expectation that the government should proactively help you when you need it.
But still, it does seem like there should be a middle point somewhere where you get rid at least of point one and you tip over point three, right? That seems like it'd happen way before stuff gets really violent.
But then, culturally you guys fantasize about violently confronting the government since day one, which I guess is what happens when your foundational myth is also a colonial-revolutionary myth.
It is pretty messed up, though.
Okay, so, I'm going to ramble a lot because this is something that causes me a lot of anxiety and stress, but I'll try and explain this, there are a lot of Americans who support better practices and would happily vote for politicians who claim to support them, and then often do, but the politicians often go back on their word, or at the very least, are stopped by the rest of their party or the opposing team (yes, team). Why do politicians go back on their word, or only attempt to follow through when the vote is stacked against them? Because often the things that will improve the lives of Americans are things that will go against corporate interests. Don't be fooled, Democrats are bought and paid for by corporations too, the things the implement are usually things that will have little to no corporate cost. However, the moment you start talking about things like higher corporate taxes, taxes on the rich, public healthcare, etc, they act like they have no idea what you're talking about. They basically serve the purpose of not being Republicans, while the Republicans serve the purpose of not being Democrats.
Okay, but at least Democrats aren't running headlong towards fascism, right? Yes, however now you have the issue where many states have the votes rigged in favor of one party, typically republican. I live in a state that should have a significantly higher number of democrat representatives, both in the state and federal legislature. However, because the voting districts are gerrymandered to hell, it means Republicans get a significant advantage. Then, you have the issue where republicans are intentionally making kids idiots because they know it increases the chances of them being future republicans. You have the problem where your only choices are the politicians the Democrats or Republicans put in front of you.
You could try and start a new party, but remember that for every vote you capture, that's possibly one less vote going to the only major party who doesn't want a 4th Reich; because you probably won't be capturing any republican votes. You have to be certain that you're going to capture enough votes to beat the Republicans and the Democrats, otherwise the Republicans will probably win and try their damnedest to implement Project 2025. To steal a phrase, "if you're going to kill the king, you'd better not miss". Everything has to go right, which means it won't.
So protest, right? Well, that only kinda works. The moment a protest runs into corporate interests, it hits a brick wall. You can be sure that every corporation will immediately start funnelling money into shady political groups who'll use it to spread FUD and manufacture bad actors so the protest loses public appeal. You can try and upgrade the protest to a riot and commit property damage, but that'll only make you look bad and you'll struggle to find support from people. That means the likelyhood of a protest going well and having any real effect is pretty slim.
So... What else can you do at that point? These people have more money than God. Something like the top 40 richest people in the world have enough money that they could likely completely and permanently fix many of humanity's global issues, and still have billions to play with. Yet they don't.
Well, you can ban political contributions.
Over here you have a hard limit on how much money private citizens and corpos can contribute, no donation can be anonymous. You can't even sell merch or collect cash donations if you're a political party.
But a more interesting point you made is the perception of protests. You picture them as... well, US protests. You get a cute little march with people giving cops flowers and then it escalates to "riot", which is already on the other end of the going straight to violence spectrum I find so weird.
The escalation point of a protest in my mind is a strike (which, weirdly, your relatively rich media people just successfully and very publicly did, and are still doing). The next step after that is a general strike.
Sure, I hear that there is likely not enough public support for that in the US. You seem to see that as part of the system that prevents nonviolent action from being useful, but surely the lack of support discards the option of violent action as well, right? When you talk violent or revolutionary acts you also need public support. If people aren't willing to put real pressure in other ways you're also not going to round up the capitalists using sticks and handguns any time soon.
I'm not surprised at the sense of powerlessness, I'm surprised by how the notion that violence solves the powerlessness is so prevalent.
Chicken and egg problem. In order to ban political contributions, you would need to elect enough polititans who will vote for that against the corporate interests mentioned. Not just a majority if polititians either.
Because the high court has decided that political contributions are "speech", it would take a constitutional amendment to end them. That means 2/3 of both the upper and lower houses. Then, it has to get a majority in 3/4 of the state legislatures as well before actually taking effect.
For reference, in the last 41 years it hasn't been possible to do that for an amendment saying women have the same rights as men, something that runs into far less corporate opposition than ending ~~bribery~~ political contributions.
Yeah, no, your constitutional system is broken beyond repair.
That's not up for debate. Like I said above, every other democracy has done a new Constitution or a full on rework at some point. Americans are pretty unique in getting hung up on their foundational moment like that.
I mean, SC precedent can be altered eventually, but even the really obviously flawed design of the court in general is a constitutional issue with obvious improvements available.
But again, a new Constitution seems like a much lower bar than... you know, The Revolution.
i think a lot of us feel the problems are so entrenched, and any lower bar to change so inaccessible, nothing short of violence will create any significant change.
given how difficult it would be to (for example) change our constitution or end corporate political contributions through non-violent means, what's left? every part of our current system is self-reinforcing on the national level.
it doesn't help that the sentimental commitment to "our founding fathers" is equivalent to something like religious faith (see - christofascism, american nationalism) and/or national identity (because we don't have any other).
Someone already addressed your comment about political contributions, but...
Because anything in the US that isn't giving cops flowers gets escalated by cops and bad actors. Stick a few people in the crowd with molotovs and now the cops have an excuse to start swinging batons and shooting people with beanbags.
A lot of people don't have the money to strike right now. Additionally, corporations have a lot of sway with local governments and sometimes building managers/landlords. They're comfortable and entertained enough that it doesn't feel urgent enough to risk being jailed, fired, and possibly evicted; and they don't have the money to risk everything going south (and it probably would). I've seen other people make this comparison, so you mighta heard it before, but it's like boiling a frog. If you do it slow enough, the frog won't realize it's dying. It's honestly dystopian as fuck.
I think part of the hope is that if you go straight to violence, it'll put pressure on people to pick a side, effectively shaking the fence or knocking them out of their "frog daze" to make them wake up to the reality they're slowly being boiled alive.
Another part is that it might give them hope that they can actually change things, motivating them to join the cause. When you watch protests regularly escalate to violence because of cops or suspected plants while resulting in little to no improvement, you become jaded and hopeless. Look at how much effort it took to get states to start taking cop brutality seriously; and that was something a majority of Americans probably agreed was a huge issue that needed to be addressed sooner rather than later. Yet it took a hell of a lot of effort and a mini rebellion, and we still have issues in many states with police brutality.
Finally, violence against your oppressors, or the thought of it, gives you a feeling of power. When you feel powerless for long enough, the thought of finally having enough power to destroy the people responsible for the state of the world is, quite frankly, intoxicating.
These aren't the only reasons people might have for wanting violence, I'm sure America's culture of rebellion and violence is another part of it, but I think those are probably some of the more common reasons.
Political violence as a power fantasy does ring true to me. This entire thread has been a mix of "but there's nothing we can do", which seems pretty obviously less true than the average American seems to think, and "violent revolt would be needed", also probably not true.
There seem to be two intertwined fantasies: powerlessness as a balm for maybe a bit of class guilt, and a power fantasy of becoming a radical revolutionary once shit hits the fan. "Yeah, I could do something now, but it's futile, so I better carry on. But just you wait because when the revolution comes I'm so there", and so on.
That I can wrap my head around and seems to fit best with the stuff above. I mean, it's a pretty universal feeling, I think. It's definitely not US-exclusive, but you guys are really good at it, and it compounds with a bunch of other things that got mentioned in this thread, too.