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should
Ok now... This verb does not exist in state politics. Sooner you realize it, the better.
I don't understand what it's going to take for someone to do something. Protests are not going to work when they're holding all our money, services, rights, data, etc hostage, and threatening all our public servants. We already had a hard time protesting before this, because health care is tied to employment. It's not a coincidence that they're going after Medicare and Medicaid. They want an entire nation of indentured servants. Unable to own anything, including our own freedom. When we can't work anymore we can just go die in the wilderness like animals I guess. Hmm where have we heard that before?
Everyone is terrified and exhausted. It seems pretty evident that the election was outright stolen, and I have a hard time believing nobody in power suspected something that many of us immediately called, not with the mountains of evidence that's been stacking up for months, years even. So why didn't they do anything? Why did they wait until Trump was sworn in to even talk about it?
I see Canadians online talking about Americans like we chose this. But we didn't, it was forced upon us, and we're begging for help! Who can we turn to if not our allies? What is going on???
You did choose this through decades of inaction, apathy, laziness, fecklessness. The world kept telling you that something was wrong in your "democracy" and the canned response was, "Haha, not in America - land of the free, home of the brave!" Then one day, with your rights stripped away you all finally say, "Not my fault!" It was, it is, and it will be solely Americans fault. And the longer it takes you to own it and fix-your-shit the more costly it's going to be. As always. Imagine how much easier it would have been had you just mass protested after Citizen's United, for example.
No one is coming to save you. The people who have been standing up to fix it couldn't motivate the rest of you to get off the couch. My suggestion is to stop parroting excuses like, "We are too exhausted to do it", and do it. Look to history for examples on how, and for what real exhaustion looks like. The first steps are usually meeting with organizations already doing something and ask what you need to do.
"But I'll lose my job!" If 50% of the country loses there job then there will be a lot of job opportunities. "But my family!" Ok, then sit there and let your fear keep you from action. Keep waiting for someone to save you. Watch how bad it gets as Americas military falls under the control of a facist regime. Watch as your educational system becomes even more of an indoctrination engine. I wonder which, if any, heinous act by your government finally motivates you enough. The kids-in-cages wasn't enough, I wonder what could be? Possibly nothing.
"Home of the brave". Fucking ha ha ha. "Land of the free". Sure. I have no sympathy for people just waking up now. Where the fuck have you been?
This take is lazy and offensive to everyone who truly didn’t have a choice. I’ve been in school this entire time because growing up everyone told me I could be whatever I wanted if I worked hard. Now that I’ve done that and I’m almost graduated, I’m looking around at a world that is completely unrecognizable from before and hope for everyone my age is at an all-time low. Please enlighten me, as someone who has only been a member of the civic process for less than half a decade, how the fuck is this my fault?
sorry trashboat, apparently you were the king fascist all along. it's all your fault, and it's very important that we all recognize that it's trashboat's fault. the only way things can get better is if we all blame trashboat
I know it probably feels comforting to claim the moral high ground and say "I told you so" but you're just letting your own weakness infect the people on your side. Everyone has moral turning points in all of their lives and it's a futile and stupid gesture to say your entry point is better than someone elses. Let's focus our hatred on the people who deserve it: billionaires.
The decades of inaction should be largely heaped at the feet of Baby Boomers, who have sucked up and hollowed out the vast majority of American prosperity.
Everyone else has been carried along in the wake of their outsized cohort's rampage.
If I lose my job how am I supposed to heat my house, feed myself and my wife, or treat my chronic illness? Employers don't look kindly on job abandonment, especially to go protest the thing businesses stand for...
Surely there will be waves of protestors being kicked out on the streets with their families, left to starve in ditches with nothing they can do.
I apologize to American readers that I was not able to summarize my response into a witty, 30-second sound clip. I see these assumptions made in your response:
a) the only thing you can do is protest. b) you will have to protest during your work schedule. c) all employers will fire you for job abandonment if you protest. d) no employers are equally concerned with the downward spiral that is your country. e) even with the mass job loses due to job-abandoning protesters you will not be able to easily find another job. f) no one is doing anything already you can help with. g)your job/health coverage will be fine as things escalate if you do do anything. h) no one in your position has found a way to contribute. i) no need to look at the situation or ask questions because you no you can do nothing. i) history shows that the safest bet for you and your country is to sit there and do nothing.
The reason Americans don't have the ability to see through flimsy talking points is b/c your educational system is shit, tbh. We told you this too, every year. They are ranked. ie. we put them in numbered order from best (#1) to worst. Maybe you would have heard about it if you stopped yelling about how America is number #1 all the time. Spoilers: They aren't number #1 in education. Clearly.
I don't have the energy or patience to dismantle each possible excuse every American can come up to justify their inaction. They are #1 at that. So the simpler approach is from my initial response: find the people already doing something in your area and ask what you need to do. Do this instead of coming up with reasons not to do it. Do it as an act of faith in your country that you can do something. Do it as an act of freedom and bravery. Dare to do the impossible, like skipping your internet browsing time, to get in touch with people who are doing something. Read books about the sacrifices previous generations made for you to have the chance to sit and post on a non-censored platform like Lemmy. If internet posts can stopped facist governments the you can rely on us non-Americans to get the job done. Unlike us foreigners, you still have the best chance to turn this around.
Also, if you manage to waddle to meet up with some like minded individuals do post briefly here telling other Americans that it's actually not impossible. They are an obstinate people living on the southern border of my country. And although I enjoy ridiculing their weaknesses I would prefer to celebrate their successes, as has been our tradition until very recently.
Ahh, so you aren't even American. How is your opinion relevant then?
People keep saying this, but WHO?
Who are you talking about?
Who is this "somebody" you keep talking about showing up to save us?
Look, nobody is coming to save us, and asking somebody else to risk harm on your behalf is selfish.
If we object, it isn't on somebody else to show up and save us, it's on us.
If you aren't willing to make the moves yourself, who the fuck are you to ask somebody else to.
Nobody is coming to save us, folks. It's either us, me and you, or it's nobody.
I don't trust anyone enough for something to actually be done. Buy guns, buy 3d Printers, learn to make clothing, prepate your homesteads, prepare for isolation and be ready to lean on and support your neighbors.
Be the best you can be, make good relationships with those around you, and brace yourselves . It's the only thing I can realistically think I alone can do for me, my family, and my community.
Is it a doomer view? I don't think so. I like to have hope that my vote can fix something. I like to think my protests are heard and considered. But at the end of the day I have to focus on doing what I actually can.
I have a similar, albeit slightly less doomer, view currently. Focus on the safety and good of your community and loved ones, and remember that nothing is guaranteed to us. Do the necessary good steps like voting and protesting, but don't be naïve enough to think that's the whole of necessary action or a magic bullet to solve the problems. Do the good, but focus on the real workable action in your direct sphere of influence. Cheers.
In 2016, people thought that Trump was the problem. That if Trump left, we could have civility restored to the electoral process. Defeating Trump won't solve the problem because he isn't it - it is the electorate. The voters need to SEE what will happen when this or that occur.
Deport all the immigrants, see the damage that brings, then bring them back with legal protections this time.
Cancel all the science, see how far behind we get, then bring it back with all the funding to make the next moonshot.
Get rid of all fogien aid, watch as our global power dimishes, the vote to bring it back with a clear and true purpose other than empire building.
The people don't know WHY these things are important, and are unwilling to listen or learn. Thus, the only teacher is to experience. But to quote Trump: "There will be some pain" when doing it.
100%. Even after he leaves office, is anyone confident that the country will collectively go "well that was embarrassing, anyway, back to normality now!"
How, at this point, could anyone assume that in 4 years Trump will just "leave the office"?
I don't disagree with you and I would love it if people had to experience the consequences of their poor decisions and learn hard lessons that they've been evading for years. The problem is that millions of innocents are and will be caught in the crosshairs. This is a matter of life or death for many people who did not vote for him and it is unconscionable to allow all those people to die just so a bunch of loud racist hillbillies with lead poisoning can learn a lesson.
There are already millions caught in the crosshairs. Its not a choice between doing nothing and saving lives, and doing something and losing them. We are losing them both ways but by doing nothing people evade social responsibility.
Fair, I just see no other way of swaying minds without consequences. We tried 4 years of shielding people from Trump's baser urges, and we ended with thousands of people dying each day to COVID. Then 4 year later THEY VOTED HIM BACK IN.
They don't even know what DEI means until oh hey, they're out on disability for months+ for surgery in their physically demanding job and need help because their arm or whatever doesn't work and/or they'll be out for surgery for months and/or SSDI rejects their claim. The willful ignorance and just plain ignorance is really sad.
Dead on. This is a snowballing shit storm building since Reagan. Probably earlier. Trump is only a foothold, a useful idiot. He's popular with the Boomers and knows how to work them and use the language. They even refer to him as "their boy." Meanwhile he's "making deals" e.g. pumping the dicks of other corpos like Xi and Putin and pretending to get them on board even when he fails with the smarter leaders while his little weasels dismantle shit in the background.
This is spot on.
Just as we saw with Boomers in the UK, who happily threw their country off an economic cliff with Brexit, America's Boomers are equally feckless and unrelenting.
People over the age of 70 should lose the right to vote and just focus on being old and retired. It's absurd that to have people constantly voting to chop down the tree whose shade they will never live to enjoy.
It wasn't stolen and it wasn't forced on you. Depressingly enough, turkeys, it seems, do sometimes vote for Christmas. I totally agree with you about the awfulness of the situation but - he told you how he was going to govern, he told you what he was going to do and then he won the election that enables him to do it. You did, as a nation, choose this.
I don't know how any nation state can really intervene on that basis. Its not like Hitler steam rolling Poland or Putin annexing the Crimea - this isn't an invasion or a hostile takeover, it's an elected President carrying out the will of the people that voted for him.
I'm not going to argue with you, I get enough of that on reddit. But there is a literal mountain of evidence, including their own statements and sketchy behavior, hard data, unsecured voting machines, various voter suppression tactics, ballots that were tossed, code that was published online months (possibly more than a year) before the election, and one of the twerps currently taking over the treasury wrote code that can falsify ballots while he was an intern for Musk.
Also, it is like Hitler, they're using the same exact playbook, and while there are some key differences there is no arguing that this is the exact reason NATO exists. Justin Trudeau could invoke article 4 for threats of invasion. Someone from our government should still be able to invoke article 5. These international agreements exist because when the highest power in the nation is compromised, we need outside help.
Using NATO to stop Trump, you want WW3? Because that's how you get WW3. You're not going to get any help until you help yourselfs. It's your house, you have to clean it up. If you need an idea of a place to start, I'd start with the Democrats.
If you have democratic senators you should be a thorn in their side about why aren't they grinding the Senate to a halt. Why they aren't using every tool available to resist senate Republicans. The Republicans did when Obama was president and he wasn't a fascist. Now seems like a good time to start using all those republican cheats to blanket obstruct the Senate and Congress.
If you have republican senators you should be getting involved with the democratic party, first screaming and dragging everyone you know with you. Then demanding over and over that the old game is dead and they need you and the people to get out of this.
Regardless, no one is coming to save you. You need to first believe that you can actually work with your neighbors, then saves yourselves. Tons of Americans have been begging for your help to stop Trump for over a decade now and you thought it was just their job to take care of it. Well guess what, it was yours too and you failed to answer the call.
I'm sorry, I'm Canadian, and what exactly do you think all of NATO could do, allied and organized against the American armed forces? Do you seriously believe we could stage an effective military campaign against America? That would he suicide.
It's just so fucked up, all of it. They've been pumping shitloads of money into their military for so long, it's a behemoth larger than the military of the next, what, 9 countries combined? All that money should have been spent on things that are actually good for U.S. citizens. A better educational system, a healthcare system, more worker protections, a better social security net, trying to fix homelessness, etc.
But now, their humongous military is going to be used against their own people and their allies. And all the while I'm here thinking that a well-educated, healthy, happy populace would have been much less inclined to vote a fascist into office. But hey, they didn't need all that, they were already the best country in the world, right?
The Canadians I talk to are either furiously pissed off and lashing out at me like I'm about to annex them myself or dead ass silent. This is a weird fucking timeline to say the least.
