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  • Look, cards on the table, shit IS scary. We've got an intelligence apparatus that has every message every one of us has ever sent electronically, and probably microphone data from every Internet connected device we've ever been in earshot of, so organizing something a little more potent has to happen nearly spontaneously. You're dreaming if you think our operatives (or cops for that matter) are above just throwing a bag over your head, breaking your legs and throwing you down a mineshaft. Those intelligence agencies, for most of a century, have been spearheaded by the kind of people that sponsored violent right wing reactionary movements around the world to depose peaceful communist/leftist regimes you've maybe never heard of. They'd gladly take this over someone even as far left as Sanders.

    Half the country still thinks that everything happening is perfectly cool and normal and totally how a republic works. A lot of the people in power still aren't convinced that Trump won't wake up one day and just be normal; they come to each new day of horrors completely shocked and surprised that he continued to be what he said he would, and to suggest that we should maybe do something about that is scandalous to them. Those two things together mean that the meaningful support is not great. Being a lone gunman is unlikely to change much, given that MAGA is a movement, and others around Trump- the people who hand him the EOs, and the billionaires who sponsor them- will remain. Being an armed resistance is effectively a death sentence, and nobody's quite ready to sign up for that, at least until it's absolutely clear that the alternative to fighting is just as bad. If I go rogue and catch a bullet, nobody's going to take care of my family, they're going to be homeless until RFK sends them off to a camp. Plus, as others have mentioned, it's pretty goddamn difficult to organize mass protests in DC when everyone who feels like you do is living dollar store hot dog to dollar store hot dog and DC is further from you than Moscow is from London.

    For as long as I've been alive, the consistent message to the American people has been that help is not coming. The cops will gladly form a task force to come shoot your grandma in her living room, but routinely have argued that they have no duty to protect you. When the BLM protests were happening, a bunch of my coworkers cheered and giggled at videos of cops doing drive by pepper spraying of people who were just walking, and derided that dude (I think it was in Seattle?) who returned fire when the cops shot at him first. When the great recession happened, our government spent a trillion dollars bailing out banks instead of people. If you need assistance, you're ruthlessly scrutinized and continuously presumed to be a criminal or a parasite, only to be given not nearly enough at the end of it. Not only that, but we've even been attacking the helpers. We've spent decades eroding the ability to join a union, eroding the efficacy of unions, fighting and propagandizing against them at every turn (it doesn't help that I've had my fair share of experience with worthless unions where the rep wouldn't even return your calls. I know more people who've had experience with weak ass unions than people who've had experience with unions that are prepared to bury your boss under a sports stadium). We're shutting down churches that house the homeless, arresting people who try to feed them, and our authorities have the goddamn audacity to frame that and bulldozing encampments as acts of "compassion" because to not make the homeless miserable is to enable them. Every one fundamentally understands that help is not coming, we must help ourselves, and this is a really, really, really big job for an individual.

    So, yeah, I'd say I'm pretty goddamn scared and I feel rational to be so.

    The only thing that makes real sense, imo, is to start laying the groundwork for cold balkanization. It will break the federal government's power, finally allow needed social, legal, and economic changes, and hopefully can be achieved without much bloodshed.

    • We've got an intelligence apparatus that has every message every one of us has ever sent electronically, and probably microphone data from every Internet connected device we've ever been in earshot of

      Hahaha, no. The idea that devices with microphones are always spying on you is absurd. It just doesn't happen. It couldn't happen due to how much power and bandwidth it would require. And if they were it would be the corporations spying, and not the government. As for emails and text messages, sure. The US may collect a lot of data, but they can't process a lot of data. Look how many violent attacks there have been in the US, and how few have been prevented

      They're really bad at spotting anything before it happens. When attacks fail, it's almost always because the attacker screwed up, not because the spies found out ahead of time. The Nazi who tried to drive a U-Haul into the White House wasn't stopped by spies, he was stopped by a security barrier, even though he'd been planning the attack for 6 months.

      But, there's always a small chance that they'll stumble on you if you're plotting something.

    • Hijacking this to say, do not work any internet correction service for money, they will use that against you. They save every comment and shade you threw at your own, they will release them if beneficial or it will be hacked in time. Apart from the military that does so and has no legals, you will still be known with every comment you made, it's all saved, the saving of you doing so is more important to them, bc they can burn you and make money as if they where saving America. Jews where especially targeted in this. I'm jewish btw and my god none of us actually care agout each other, it's always an immediate lie for some imaginer competion that never existed, it's just insecurity!

  • purposeful education sabotage and propaganda is why they don't rise up

  • So many Americans have taken the oath of defending the constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic. They should all be on their way to the White House to actually follow this oath.

    • I'm a vet. I'm unsure why the DoD hasn't put a stop to this yet. There have been clear violations of this oath by elected officials. At the very least, letting Elmo wreck shit.

      We have a problem though. The retired boomer vets, and some younger ones, voted for this. Conservatives tend to be the ones that raise their hands. They seem to have forgotten the oath and think that all of this is A OK. They've been guzzling the kool aid. Hell, my base still shows Faux "News" at the base hospital on some TVs. Even though a base commander banned news channels during COVID.

      Those of us that do recognize this as a violation of the constitution do not number enough to do anything. Rising up involves getting rid of the entire GOP, plus multiple billionaires, multiple media moguls, SCOTUS, lower court appointees, appointees of many other government agencies, and on and on. It isn't something even a couple thousand can accomplish. We saw this with the attempted coup on J6.

      What we're doing is making sure we're armed enough to defend ourselves in case of a civil war, or violence from the lunatics who still think this is all fine and good while we scream towards fascism. I hate this. I wish I could go do something. With every fiber of my being I do. My nervous system is fucked. I can barely leave the house many days. Especially in the winter when the cold shoots pain and fatigue through the roof. I can defend my own, probably my own neighborhood if it came to it. That's about the extent for me.

      I live in a place with a bunch of these nut bags as it is too. There is a crazy trump church in my town with heavy ties to a christian nationalists extremist group. It's the largest church in the small town. Those people concern me. There is a crazy guy 2 houses down from me that thinks the local base dropped COVID on us with the tankers. I think I broke the gerbal wheel in his brain when I told him I've seen them inside and out and there isn't anywhere to even put a "bag o covid". We had a major wildfire hit and he blamed the firefighters for not flying in heavy smoke, at night and in super high winds. We're talking 70mph+ gusts and 45 sustained. There are some that still have trump/pence signs up. That's the type of crap I'm working with. Many are vets as well.

      I get how it looks from the outside. We've been claiming that our firearms are for exactly what is happening. Thing is, those that support this. Those that voted for this, have the vast majority of firearms in this country. The last statistic I saw was from 2022 and republican firearm owners numbered nearly 2x democratic owners. That didn't even count the amount of firearms owned. That percentage is the same for individuals who live in a home where firearms are present. The left has slowly been arming up due to increased violence from the right against the left, but we're in no position to rise up.

      If the right does end up realizing that they fucked up and need to finally rise up with the left, then you'll see it at a local level first. Other countries poke fun at us for not taking vacations because we don't have the days or money to do so. Yet they expect us to travel across country, with absolutely no guarantee others will be there, to maybe get a shot off at 1 person? It's over 2500 miles for me to get across the country. That'd take me at least a week and a half. I wouldn't even be able to do that solo due to the medical issues. People can't afford to do that. So the local level would be the target. Local congressmen (most of whom live in DC over half the year as it is). Local senators. State capitals, provided they're red states and are following suit with the fed govts.

      This got long, I'm sorry for that, but this is a much more complicated issue. I seriously don't think people realize just how fucking far it is to get to DC. Just how useless it would be without some serious backing by the right and the military, or at least enough of the military that remembers their oath and don't fire on us. That combo could hold off the cops, but remember as well. We're dealing with police who are militarized now. They've been eating up old military equipment for at least a decade now. Some even have old APCs. They have no qualms over shooting everything all the way down to your dog just because it looked at them funny.

    • If nothing else, there have been countless Secret Service agents and military personnel around figures like Trump and Musk - every single one of them who had the opportunity to take the shot but chose not to, has violated their oath, and are complicit in this country's downfall.

    • Can’t do shit when tens of millions of citizens would go batshit insane if anything forceful was done against this new breed of Nazis.

    • I'm confused... Who are you talking about? What oath? Are... Are we talking about our mandatory "pledge of allegiance" we indoctrinate kids with?

      You people can't be real...

  • We went to one. About a thousand people stood around not talking to each other and left. It was fascinating. And disheartening.

    You read anxiety where it doesn’t exist, not in the way you think it does.

    Standing in a street isn’t going to cut it. You can stand anywhere. That is not the motion that is required.

    And if you think the landscape hasn’t changed this go: oh you sweet summer child.

    • American protests are the dumbest shit.

      A bunch of people thinking they have done something productive because they held up a sign until their arms got tired after an hour and joined a mailing list that they might toss $5 to.
      It'd be more productive to host a block party where at least everyone gets fed.

      There was one in Orlando recently where they (80 people) just protested nothing and everything all at once and then they just packed up talking about how good that was.
      At best it was just an excuse to go to the park.

      People are comfortable even when they stress that they aren't and don't want to do anything more than tell people to stop being meanies like it does something. And are scared of what happens when we actually push back against bullies cause we haven't for decades.

      • Strikes work, when honored, because you’re withholding a valuable resource. In fact you’re withholding the capacity for corporate to make money. It’s a bad look for something like a hospital because people are now keenly aware of how staffing impacts the emergency room and their elective surgery post op care. Unfortunately, this act is strangled by COL and non-livable wages.

        That said, the landscape has changed. The recent Utah legislation aside, look at Amazon in December. Strikes happened because corporate refused to acknowledge the union’s existence. You can vote to enter a union, which is a beautiful thing, the solidarity required alone is admirable, but if everyone ignores your existence you get Amazon in December 2024. Idk how that one ended. Probably attrition and nothing good.

        Providence Health System of Oregon did the same. They technically acknowledged the nurse’s union, came to the table each negation session, but did nothing, ignored the nurses and their negotiators and left them without a contract for a year. So, all of Providence went on strike. The doctors agreed that this was egregious behavior on the part of Providence Health System, and cannot do much at work without their nurses anyway, so they added impact by joining the nurse’s strike. Simultaneous, state wide. Not as little coverage as Luigi, but not much coverage news wise. Why? This scares corporate. (Wage wise, west coast COL i is s higher and nurses wages are higher there, starting at $1650/wk days and $1900/wk nocs for a no experience nurse. This cost jumps to $7k/wk per nurse for union busting contracts. A hospital will pay this difference rather than agree to a 6-10% raise or the reintroduction of a separate sick time bank in addition to vacation time. Never underestimate the power of corporate spite.) Last check after a month of mutual attrition things aren’t great.

        All of that novel aside, its incredibly naive to think it can be as simple and easy as standing in a street on your day off. For ONE day. If it were, that action would be completed already.

        Providence stood spitefully by and watched for 30 days, 30days of what had to be well over a thousand contract nurses at $7k/wk each, loss off their millions on hospital and surgery money, loss of the lodestone worker that both they and doctors can do little without, 30 days of this before acknowledging a crappy negotiation they refused to acknowledge for over a year.

        And that is ONE corporate entity in ONE state.

        This administration is way worse. And what are you withholding from them by standing in a street for one day on your day off?

        Think bigger and better or nothing will happen.

  • Oh shit, we cussin out the liberal Americans again? Fuck yeah, deal me in, that shit’s cathartic as fuck

    • I love that we're starting arguments against one another. This is going to make it extra easy for Trump to polarize more and more people.

      Lemmy has like, what, twelve conservatives on it? Who do you people think you're insulting here?

  • I don't think modern American political discourse is capable of the old style of revolt on a large scale. Old political movements were based on policy and rhetoric. Media has taken the place of rhetoric, and the majority of media serves to push toward one party or another rather than a real position on anything. Much of that media is based around the idea of negative partisanship (Vote for us because we aren't Them.) rather than policy because there is so little policy space to play in when the choice is Right vs More Right. That is enough to get people to pick up a ballot, but generally not a weapon, when all of the institutional power has been focused on convincing people to do anything but. Team Red is (slightly ironically) anti-communist when it bothers to pretend to have an ideology. Team Blue is usually just anti-Team Red, which is why they can barely manage to get some semblance of support. And there is essentially no other option because of the voting system and the memories of the Cold War keep anything collectivist at bay for the time being. When you combine 'Vote for change, don't fight for it,' and 'Your options are An Unpolished Turd Promising You A Better Tomorrow (falsely) or A Polished Turd Promising You More of What You Got Yesterday (Truthfully),' you get what you see now.

396 comments