I’ve seen alot of calls for violence in America. Whether it be directed at the president or Federal officers, many people are advocating for an escalation in response to the current situation.
And believe me, I do understand. what I see happening in America is horrifying. But all I am imploring is to really think about what your asking for. Because you can’t put the genie in the bottle once you’ve left it out.
If you’re really gung-ho about it, go and ask a Veteran of Iraq or Afghanistan about it and see what they think. If anyone will know about it they will.
I am going to link a YouTube Playlist. Its the Associated Press Archives of the Bosnian-Serbian war. Because THAT is what will happen if wide scale violence breaks out. Except what will happen in America will be a hundred times worse.
The Bosnian war was pretty much broken up along ethnic lines. “Well it’s going to be Conservative VS. Liberal” you say. Except it won’t be. It will be anyone having a grudge against someone going after them.
ALOT of personal animosity will be taken out in the first few weeks I feel.
And I think the Seige of Sarajavo will be writ large in American cities across the country. Imagine having to dodge sniper fire on your way to get to your job at Wendy’s.
Because that’s the other thing no one is thinking about. You are still going to have to make a living while this is all going to be happening. And the cost of everything will skyrocket. Shipping will probably have to be escorted from place to place because people will be stealing or even blockading locations because they’re “damn dirty libs” or “Fascist Conservatives” Fresh produce will become a thing of the past.
Canada and Mexico will close their borders due to all the refugee’s trying to cross. so if you thinking of doing it, do it the moment everything pops off because otherwise you won’t get in.
Basically Civil war is going to the worst thing to happen in America in a long time. and the only good that comes out of it will be Americans will finally have first hand experience of real war torn violence. And maybe that will hopefully last for another two hundred years or so.
If America even survives the outcome that is.
Not American, so feel free to stop reading.
It’s ridiculous to me how you yanks go from zero to a hundred like this. Either normality or civil war. Like there is no in between? You have an authoritarianism problem. So resist authoritarianism. What makes you think that the only way to resist is shooting people? Resistance is a spectrum, and you have barely started using democratic means to fight back (you just started electing democratic socialists), much less active procedural and institutional warfare (is Bernie demanding a vote for every procedural point requiring a vote? Are the Dems actually using any rat fucking tactic to make the state ungovernable? Are your local and state governments really resisting beyond making angry noises?). You have barely tried non violent resistance (not the same as peaceful!) but you’re such a violent culture that you jump straight to military solutions. Wtf. Those come at the very end, if everything else has failed. Has it? Nowhere near. So this talk about civil war, is that really useful?
Whilst I agree, the problem lies with the individualism of the general population rather than the collective mindset. The backwards-ass government system (i.e. no opposition government, the bastardisation of the 3 branches etc. and the power hungry head-of-state vs a Parliamentary system for example), the extreme “state-first” mentality that then struggles when the Federal system comes down on it and the “divide and conquer” tactics of corporations with the support of successive right-leaning governments. A judicial system that corrupted by politics and trying to guess what a bunch of
guysslave-owning white landowners 250 years ago would have thought is also very very very very very very very dumb. The law is meant to be blind - it’s why the statue used to represent it wears a blindfold, holds a scale and a sword.The country is in need of a Civil Revolution rather than a civil war. Both sides are more similar than they realise, and generally want the same thing, and none seem to see the real enemy (CEOs, Billionaires etc.) due to all the propaganda.
The problem is that the steps between zero and a hundred are incremental rights which take decades to establish. If you are a non-American then you might have those steps already established, but currently the US does not. So once the status quo passes beyond the acceptable parameters the only possible solution is violence.
Another user I spoke with asked about collective rebellion, union strikes, and general resistance, but these don’t work if the infrastructure isn’t already in place. You can’t start a strike if you don’t have a union and your co-workers don’t agree, you can’t take up arms without at least a state level rebellion, most protests are effectively meaningless, and unless you are willing to give up everything (job, family, and well being) then you’ll never amount a significant resistance.
For the most part people want to live their lives with the least amount of fucking up they can. So long as the republican’s don’t fuck up their shit too much they will keep their heads down and vote in the elections.
Democrats and states both follow the same rules. They will try to counter the Republicans, but if that means a government shutdown with old people and the poor going without assistance then they are willing to cave. So far we aren’t at the point where any US group is willing to make real sacrifice to make a change, such as a fighting, going without, or causing their family to suffer.
You can’t start a strike if you don’t have a union and your co-workers don’t agree
This is a major point that those outside of the US seem to miss, I think. The sheer depth of contempt for unions and unionization I’ve experienced is a massive barrier to organizing any significant resistance. I’m very certain a majority of US citizens are unaware of what a general strike even looks like. Corporate propaganda has very successfully vilified and diminished unions for a long time.
On the one hand yes you are behind on some kinds of labour organizing.
On the other hand, it’s not that simple.
a) you have a very long history of minority organizing. Black Americans, Chicanos, indigenous people, and other minorities have survived for generations. It sounds like a leftie cliché, but you guys should really take leadership from them.
b) you don’t have the baggage that comes with entrenched left wing politics. There is a thing like too much left wing politicking. In Greece for example, land of spectacular antifa riots, the left is absolutely paralyzed and completely fragmented. Too much history, too many reasons to blame this or that left faction for what they did 10,20,30, sometimes 60 or more years ago. You have a chance to build on a green field.
c) one thing you Americans actually have going for you is that you guys actually believe in democracy. You’re true believers. It’s a thing we in the rest of the world have always kind of being weirded out by you that you want to be electing judges and sherrifs and school boards etc. And you actually have this libertarian steak in you that’s kind of interesting when it comes to resistance. You have so much democratic institutional hardware just lying around.
d) you actually are close to some of the powerful economic structures, institutions, and pop culture centres in the planet. Anything you do will and already does reverberate globally in ways that others don’t.
So, while you do have very big challenges you also have very big opportunities. And friends man, you have friends. I know we give you guys shit all the time, but trust me, when Americans rise up and stand up we all feel a bit taller. I’m telling you this as someone who listened to RATM on the way to weekly marches getting gassed by the police, thinking we were trying to be as cool as the WTO protests in Seattle.
I feel like what you are touching at is that liberals in the US, and Americans in general, are waiting for a touch stone. So far nothing has gone so far as to start the fire. On the other hand there has been no centralizing ember, someone to carry the torch.
Yes, the US has a long history of minority organizing, but minorities are one of the worst groups for turning out for elections (in fact minorities are more likely to turn out if they are voting for Republicans than they are for anyone else, a key element of being a conservative in the US is turning out to vote but liberals can’t seem to harness that energy).
The US doesn’t have the baggage as you mentioned, but the existence of the two party system carries a ton of baggage on it’s own and has effectively squashed most third party resistance.
Most American’s do believe in Democracy, but sadly one half is too stupid to know what it is and the other half only believes in it when it supports their ideas. The second group is one which would happily ban all abortions and then complain when a woman can’t get an abortion even though the pregnancy is killing her. My very own cousin is white trash poor with his children living on government assistance, but thinks we need to end welfare because the minorities are using it. These people are too stupid for governance.
To your final point, the US left needs a leader, a cult of personality to combat Trump, but there frankly isn’t anyone right now. So far no one high enough up in the social circle has been willing to stick their head out far enough to rally around.
I hate to say it, but the US is at the point where we need a life line. Just like the US coming in and occupying Germany to eliminate the Nazis, we now need an outside force to help fix our shit. Short of that the US needs another civil war, but I’m not so certain that it will go the way we want it.
The reasons you outlined are why you are in trouble. As in, if they weren’t the case you would be in trouble. It’s a bit of a circular tautology. But they are not things that doom you. They are the shape of the whole you’re in. And it’s on you guys to find a way out. There’s no way around that. And no, the world is not coming to save you: there is no cavalry.
I don’t think you guys are doomed. I think the opposite, that the American people are a sleeping giant that can shake the world. And no, I don’t think you need to jump straight to shooting reach other.
I think that’s all well and good unless you are wrong. From my perspective I think you are wrong, but maybe you aren’t. As things sit the people that are on your side think they are in trouble and want outside help, but you are saying “you’ll be fine.” The US has historically been the interventionist in the first world, but now they are in need of intervention. This has been the soul of the Republican argument for a long time, the US intervenes and the rest of the world does nothing. Now the Republican’s want to pull aid from allies and intervene (cough invade) only when it benefits them.
At the very least Europe needs to pick up the slack the US is dropping, even if they don’t go the extra mile to help fix the US. At the end of the day the US is steering towards needing foreign interventions, a civil war, or devolving into a totalitarian regime. Meanwhile the rest of the world is watching and wondering why we don’t just fix ourselves. I’ll tell you the sensible answer, I’m renewing my passport and making sure I have enough money for a last minute flight out of the country.
Well, take care. In the meantime, listen to the 20 lessons on tyranny.
And maybe binge watch this guy, I think he’s onto something.
You’re totally right. A war is the last avenue to take. But you also are here on Lemmy, so you must see the constant calls for US Americans to take up arms against one another, despite the fact that avenues remain.
Shit sucks here. Shit will suck a lot more if there’s a war. And it will suck here and everywhere else. A lot more.
You’re absolutely right. Generations jave been indoctrinated to give up autonomy and control to the system. People have been socially and economically backed into a corner where they don’t feel like they can make any real change in their lives.
They know transcending class barriers is impossible (though they lie to themselves about it) and they don’t really believe that politics make a difference. People don’t vote. They scrabble at shit jobs and go into debt to feel richer.
Violence is the one form of power they’re truly clinging to. A gun is a surrogate for control. It’s power you can exert in your narrow sphere.
Most of this perception is wrong, but it’s a part of the culture. The idea that the only way this can get fixed is violent civil war is a game of chicken with the ruling class and they’re betting that people won’t actually rise up.
You have barely tried non violent resistance (not the same as peaceful!) but you’re such a violent culture that you jump straight to military solutions.
Most Americans are victims of a violent regime and not violent themselves. They’re scared and going through something most Canadians and many post-WWII Europeans will never have to deal with in their lifetimes. People are being murdered, and you’re telling the victims it’s their fault and that they’re violent for trying to prepare for a worst-case scenario.
Yes, of course there are other ways to confront this. Yes, I wish the country I was regrettably born in was culturally more like the EU and Canada. But it’s not that simple and I can’t help but feel that this comment is in poor taste.
You missed my point.
You missed mine. Until you find yourself the victim of an authoritarian state you live in starting a Holocaust, you don’t get to make blanket statements about an entire country that lumps the oppressors and the oppressed into the same category.
I’m not denying fear, violence, or victimhood. And I’m not equating oppressors with the oppressed. I should push back on the idea that naming cultural patterns equals blaming victims, or that only people inside the worst possible historical analogy are allowed to analyze trajectories.
I’m talking about how societies slide, not about who deserves what. Those are different conversations. I’ve been on the receiving end of state violence. I’ve marched, been gassed, watched movements radicalize too fast and burn themselves out. That’s exactly why I’m saying this: jumping straight to existential framing and armed horizons doesn’t protect anyone it only narrows the future until only catastrophe is left.
You don’t need to already be in a Holocaust to talk about escalation dynamics. In fact, if you wait until everything is unspeakable, analysis is already useless. Yes, fear is justified and preparation is understandable and necessary. But when fear becomes immune to critique, it stops being a warning signal and starts being a steering wheel.
My point hasn’t changed: there is still space, Real Political Space, for non-violent (not peaceful!) resistance, that can be powerfully disruptive. Once that space collapses, it doesn’t reopen because people were right about how bad things felt. I’m arguing against that collapse, not minimizing what’s at stake.
I should push back on the idea that naming cultural patterns equals blaming victims, or that only people inside the worst possible historical analogy are allowed to analyze trajectories.
You can absolutely analyze cultural patterns. I’m just saying “you’re a violent culture” wasn’t the right choice of words. It’s also important to, while analyzing cultural patterns, to consider the role of privilege, and that words and actions are two different things, especially when the critic is looking in from the outside. I’m not talking about you specifically, but I’ve seen a lot of European/Canadian schadenfreude in left-wing online spaces (like Lemmy) over the situation happening an America. While they aren’t wrong that America is brash and needed to be taken down a peg, and there is a place for analyzing the political trajectory, sometimes these people forget the millions of people who aren’t gun-blazing, beer drinking, flag-waving patriots who are in danger, and that if they had the bad luck of being born somewhere else, they themselves might be in the exact same situation. The idea that “America tore itself apart” makes less sense the more you think about it, but seems incredibly plausible to an observer. I think the issue at hand is that, yes, it’s good to analyze cultural patterns, but America was never a monoculture.
In both situations, I ask: How does it help in these left-wing spaces to make blanket statements about Americans, when most of the posters in these spaces are the exception to Americanism and not the rule? Who is the “you” in “you’re a violent culture”?
You don’t need to already be in a Holocaust to talk about escalation dynamics. In fact, if you wait until everything is unspeakable, analysis is already useless.
I agree with this. But the message is everything. OP was just trying to make plans for a worst-case scenario and probably not jumping immediately to violence. While it indeed is important to recognize the spectrum of resistance, it also isn’t wrong to prep for the worst in addition to that. Currently, the people of Minneapolis, Minnesota, are resisting non-violently, and the Administration is still assaulting and murdering people and Trump is still threatening the Insurrection Act and martial law. For you, it’s a golden lining, but for us living it, we’re questioning whether that will work this time and bracing for impact. Is continuing nonviolent resistance the thing that save America? Maybe. Maybe the regime still won’t give us that chance. Maybe they will just make up lies to cancel elections and enact martial law. And if all options are extinguished and violence breaks out from that, it won’t be our fault for not being nonviolent enough.
Again, there’s nothing wrong about your underlying point – nonviolent resistance is important – but how it was worded.
Every single leftist could have resisted a lot of this using the internet to spread a message.
Americans are sadly locked into the path of violence as the other path will force them to face their systemic racism, and corporate idolization which is clearly not going to happen.
It took Nicole Good to be face shot before people really started to react despite 4 other similar events with non white females and I am constantly shocked how many Americans defend corporations that are literally exploiting them. America is cooked unfortunately as like most humans, myself included, we tend to become blind with power.
Renee Good was her name. Not Nicole. Sucks that attention was only given after a white LGBT woman was killed. Still sucks even more that she was killed. I am haunted by the pictures of her glove box. It was filled with stuffed animals for her child.
It was Nicole. Renee Nicole Good
Corporations became the dominate force in our culture and in every culture around the world. 90% + of all policy in the whole world is written by corporations. There isn’t a country that exist without widening income inequality.
It would be great if this was just an American problem. It isn’t. The wealthy will use their favorite proxy the corporation to run humanity into the ground. They have already poisoned the entire planet time and time again. They are the biggest threat humanity has ever seen.
They make the Nazi look wholesome. Remember it was IBM that developed the numbering system for Jews and also helped figure out how many Jews needed to be cleared out of the Ghetto daily for the final solution. Likewise MS, Google, Meta, etc. have been giving material support to genocide.
For me it was the blunt justification of horrific indiscriminate killing of children with sniper rifle, tens of gun shots, and dropping bomb dirctlt on school and hospital. Seeing how the media did everything to cover it up, politician working overtime to censor protest, and Democrat , and Republican presidents shipping an absurd amount of tax money directly to fund the genociders what made it clear that the US corporations, and government will kill anything in their way to ensure US and other nations are slave.
The only way around this is to wait until US invade another Nato or EU country and for these country to withdraw rich people ability to leave the US. Then a revolution might be successful.
Honest question: were the other events filmed like Rene’s killing was? My hypothesis is that’s it’s more about the available footage of the incident than the victim’s demographics… But the USA is racist as fuck so I could be wrong.
you could say they were either build up or outshined by Nicole shooting. plus she was protesting ice for deporting people to labor camps. its not “this one thing did it” its gradual
I am not sure the point you are trying to make. Can you rephrase please.
The question is what the alternative would be. Look at history for the answer. The easy comparison would be Germany leading up to, during, and after World War 2, but that would be low-hanging fruit considering how very directly the US regime is trying to force other countries to join them. (Anschluss, anyone?) Look also at the countries where extremist regimes took over and didn’t get forced out until years later and the damages they did to their country and the people living in it. Unfortunately too many examples there to name. The US regime and their stormtroopers will continue to harass, arrest, and outright kill people who have a legal right to live in the US simply over the color of their skin or otherwise until they are stopped. And they will most assuredly not stop by the power of fingerwagging and strongly stated words.
It’s worthwhile you mention Sarajevo, and in reference to that I will post this tidbit posted by a MetaFilter user in 2009 regarding their experience in the siege of Sarajevo. I have it bookmarked and post it from time to time where it seems appropriate. The reality is though, you’re correct, Americans by and large don’t know what they’re asking for.
Well, unlike the majority of you (I assume), I actually lived several years in a period of savagery and killing, during which nothing - food, water, electricity, phone, clothing, sense of safety, school, the ability to go out in public, etc - was available, except during totally unpredictable, brief and sporadic occasions.
Of those who couldn’t leave my city, Sarajevo:
Some people (very few) were prepared for what they thought would be the “long haul” - this tended to be a couple of months. These people were widely seen as lunatics and dangerously pessimistic ones at that.
Most people were not at all prepared. This included my family. Many of those - like my family - considered the idea of “preparation” to be an affront to the decency we felt most people possessed. Were we wrong? Well, I don’t know. We suffered greatly; my parents were killed. But speaking only for myself, I never felt I cheapened my soul by betting on calamity. Today, that still feels like it’s worth something.
But here’s the main point: “Preparing” for the disaster really didn’t do anyone much good. Those who “prepared” ate a little better for a while. They stayed warmer for a few extra days. They enjoyed the radio for a while longer (via batteries.) But in the end, they ended up hungry, cold and bored too, just like the rest of us. Guns and weapons helped no one directly and were even of little to no use in the defense of Sarajevo, since they were toys compared to the shells, bombs and high-powered armaments of the attacking forces. The worst parts of war were psychological - the fear, anxiety, boredom, loneliness, paranoia, bad dreams. Respite from those things came with sharing food with a neighbor, finding a piece of clothing that would fit someone you knew, commiserating with others in your position, figuring out how to make make-up from brick or french fries from wheat paste and spreading this newly-acquired war knowledge around the mahala.
We knew who had extra food and supplies. For the most part, they weren’t attacked or hassled or bothered. Contrary to what these survivalists say, those in dire times generally hold on to their personal sense of pride even more than they do in normal times. I’d take a bite of a friend’s salad without bothering to ask in normal times. I’d never have done that in wartime, no matter how hungry I was.
Within the domain of those trapped in the city, civility greatly increased.
You often hear how Holocaust survivors felt guilt at surviving. Well, during war, that was a feeling everyone was aware of - people started dying right away (my parents were killed near the start of the siege, for instance) - and there was a palpable enough common sense of karma to make everyone into good Samaritans. None of us understood why we survived while others didn’t. I shared food when I had it, even though I often knew I wouldn’t have a crumb the next day. Which was no big achievement, because nearly everyone did the same.
Those who’d prepared, well, the majority of them shared their food and whatever else they had as soon as someone else was clearly in need. I can’t swear it, but I think they felt a little foolish to have been so self-obsessed, and giving away that stuff might have lessened that feeling. There were a few people who hoarded things until they ran out of stuff - eventually everybody ran out of anything worth hoarding - and they soon became wishful beggars like the rest of us. Again, I can’t swear it, but I hear stories, and it seems that these people suffer from post-war trauma, guilt and nightmares more than the rest of us.
Those survivalists, I feel sorry for them. It’s no way to live.
posted by Dee Xtrovert at 9:33 PM on January 28, 2009
Powerful account
This is why I want to start a community garden in the gated community where I live, just in case.
The only reason I’m prepping is for the eventuality that others may need help.
One side in this supposed civil war has a monopoly on weapons, training, tactics, supplies, and political power. The other side has legal weed dispensaries. It wouldn’t be a civil war, more like a Gaza style genocide.
you dont get battle lines until there’s been a few years of mass killings on both sides, before Regime Loyalist and Opposition “states” or lines solidify.
the problem with a civil war is collapse of the supply chain for most people, and you’ll have to become useful to get protection
Well, Trump and MAGA have ensured that the US is cooked anyway no matter what happens
Yeah no shit. Who thinks that?
Good morning fellow nose breather!
Good evening
The half of Lemmy who are like “Why you guys no shooting?” I mean, to say something so stupid, one must think war and battle are just a walk in the park.
It’s because USA touts that guns are needed to fight an over reaching government, except its clear that the fascist rising is going unchecked. So they are taking a jab at the fallacy of guns are needed against a government.
From what I can tell, those seem to be non-USians saying things like that.
YSK: The average citizen doesn’t have much control over the cork in the bottle.
This administration is repeatedly and consistently provoking people. Randomly shooting people in the face, and talking about sending the military to Minnesota is going to cause things to boil over if the other people we elected don’t step in and force them to cool down.
History repeats itself—if we let it.
When building power, some leaders pick a group to blame: Hitler targeted Jews, Trump vilified immigrants. Once momentum builds, the list of “enemies” grows—anyone who disagrees becomes a target.
Recognizing these patterns is the first step to stopping them. Let’s learn from the past and stand against division.
#HistoryMatters #NeverAgain #UnityOverHate
Learned about it from this episode of the Team Human podcast
But what is happening in Hong Kong is they come up with a slogan, which is translated as Do Not Split, which is, we know that some people are willing to be confrontational with riot police.
And when they are, that’s going to cost the state in terms of not only resources, but it’s going to cost the state in terms of political capital and support. And we know that there are some people who are not willing to do that. And we are going to abide by the protocol of Do Not Split, which means that we’re not going to criticize them openly, and they’re not going to criticize us openly.
If we’re the pacifists, we’re not going to have them criticize us for being sort of like, I don’t know, limpid or flaccid or not courageous or whatever. And we’re not going to criticize them for being more confrontational. And the thing is that the support is also tacit.
It’s not like they have to come out and tell the media, oh, we approve of our more sort of confrontational colleagues. They just keep quiet. They just keep quiet.
Understanding that a range of tactics is probably going to be necessary. Nobody really knows what’s going to work. But if everybody’s pushing back against a particularly violent state, then everybody’s really on the same side.
You should really post this on its own. I think people in the USA would benefit from seeing and internalizing this principle.
Great post.
However, from a European perspective all this has been a long time coming, ignoring all warnings and with open arms (pun not intended).
So for the US I don’t see how it can be fixed without going through this.
I’m sorry.
As another European, I don’t think it’s as bad as it seems. I personally don’t think most republicans are fundamentally fascist, more so convinced that Trump is playing 5d chess.
If you where to ask most Republicans if they supported democracy, right of law and freedom for all, they would say that they support it.
However, due to the tribalism of current American politics and the cult of personality around Trump, they aren’t seeing how that is being infringed.
Trump is almost 80, and will die eventually. With him will his cult of personality die. Some hardliners will probably latch on to Trump Jr or Vance, but most republicans will probably quietly switch over to supporting some more moderate dumb fuck (think Mitt Romney).
Around 84% of Republicans approve of what is clearly kidnapping murder and open fascism as we are threatening half the world, planning on invading a NATO country, and stealing oil from Venezuela. Conservatives are absolutely our enemy.
Hard disagree. The Republican politicians are not leading the masses to dark places, the masses are pulling the politicians to greater extremes and the politicians are holding them back, because they have a greater understanding of the consequences than the average voter.
Ask the average Republican if undocumented I’m immigrants should all be deported, and they will tell you yes. That’s 14 million people, and the only way to accomplish it is to build up ICE to 5 times it’s current size, and do what they are doing in Minneapolis in every city in America. What they want requires fascism.
Ask them if abortion is murder and they will say yes. They don’t care about the women that are dying from pregnancy complications, the children that will be orphaned, the families that have been torn apart because the treatment for many conditions is abortion of the pregnancy and if it’s murder you can get treatment.
Ask them if environmental regulations are too stiff and should be rolled back so the economy can grow, and they will say yes, they don’t care about the ecosystems that will be lost forever, the diseases that people will suffer from pollution, or the rights of communities to avoid those harms.
What holds them back is that individuals don’t all want the same things, so the party pulls in different directions, because some people understand the disaterous implications of a specific policy, so they don’t support that particular cruelty, but they don’t question the wider ideology, and the basic ideology is a death cult.
What you get over time is generational frustration that the corrupt politicians refuse to do what is necessary and support for more and more extreme individuals in office. People that hatch plans like the federalist society, to corrupt the courts, and project 2025, to destroy the administrative state and consolidate power into the executive, and congresspeople who will support the descent into violent fascism, because that’s what is required to give the masses what they demand.
Democracy slows down the process, but the American voters will get the cruelty, suffering, and death they demand eventually.
Right, but that all comes from upstream, with Conservative media (and politicians) focusing all their attention on “wedge issues” to distract their base from their ruinous fiscal policies, gutting the government services their base would benefit from to steal more wealth for the ultra wealthy.
Those outlets would not publish that propaganda if it did not sell. It’s not that there is no interplay, but the media figures pushing the fascist propaganda have no incentive to stop and cannot be forced to stop without abandoning core principles of our society (freedom of speech)
Executing, exiling, or dispropriating enough billionaires would make a difference, but again, you need fascist tools to stop the decent into fascism. There is a significant segment of our society that wants the violence. Not a majority, but enough that I see no peaceful way through. The violence will come for us eventually.
Again, that’s backwards. The billionaire bought the media companies so they can push their message and shift public discourse.
It’s not about profitability; they target engagement/profitability by making everything rage bait.
Sure, the billionaires are the ultimate problem. They are not the office holders.
Vance will be worse; in general the removal of Trump won’t make it better.
I dont have any words to add and hope you’re right.
None of us want to live in a war-torn state. That’s why I and most others voted for harm reduction. What we’re facing now is terrorism. The USAmerican people are being terrorized by federal forces.
People are not calling for violence for a economic policy we don’t like, which is what incited the Confederacy to begin the first USA Civil War. We’re dealing with federal forces who are hell-bent on terrorizing us. What politically-aware people have been calling for, for the better part of a year, is the next degree of harm reduction. Targeted political assassinations. Fighting ICE agents. Storming the capital, perhaps. With each month, this government gets more empowered and more violent.
Violence terrorizes people. We all know war is terrible. No one thinks the USA going through a Civil War will be exciting. People see violence and they want it to stop, and they see massive peaceful movements that have not worked, in the face of a government that shows no hesitation in threatening or attacking its people; and those people are desperate.
What is the alternative? We let federal agents keep shooting and abducting people until some magical aspect of Democracy manifests and pushes them out? How do we actually envision that happening? What do we do for the three years until our next presidential election? Every person who is killed, abducted, disappeared is a life permanently lost.
For those who talk about peaceful protests and voting the fascists out, how do you expect to win elections when your voters are being killed? It’s not just the ICE agents, either, though they certainly are violent. Consider: Layoffs, Homelessness, Imprisonment, Emigration, Suicide. The people here today are not going to be the same people here in three years.
The reality is, the people of the USA are under violent occupation. We are living the terrors of war. Violence does not require mutual-consent; and when only one side chooses to fight, you end with a massacre. That is what we have been living through – a slow-rolling massacre. No one knows what will stop this, but maybe, just maybe, ICE agents would think twice before going on deployment if half of the last three squads never made it home.
While I generally agree with everything you’ve said…
This, what we have right now?
The early access alpha preview of what could potentially happen.
Try and imagine an actual artillery strike or JDAM strike on your neighborhood, or, all the water stops working safely due to either a treatment plant getting blown up or intentionally sabotaged and poisoned.
Health and sanitation just stop … being things that exist and work, and soon half the city has some new plague, more or less indefinitely.
Oh you live in an enemy city, its really cold this winter, really hot this summer?
Click, boom, fizzle, pop. No more power for ya’ll, have fun.
… it can get so, so much worse than what we are seeing right now.
This is all true, to which I ask, what is the alternative? I’m afraid that the future of the USA is one of two options: the authoritative oppression of fascism, or the chaotic hellscape of war. Both are intolerably violent. Fascism is targeted and ruthless; War is broad and destructive.
Oh I also don’t disagree with the implication(s) of your question there.
This is a do or die moment, a hinge point or era of history.
I am just trying to make very clear that… now that we, collectively, have allowed the situation to get to the point it is now at?
Well now, instead of removing a small tumor or two, a bit of chemo maybe… now we’re at stage 4, its likely terminal, and none of the options are good, easy, muchless guaranteed to work.
Changing the situation, solving the problem… is now simply unavoidably going to be extremely costly, in ways that… probably most people who regularly post on internet forums think they understand, think they are or could be ready for… but in reality they likely are not.
Reading about the horrors of a civil war, watching a documentary or movie or reading a book about it, … that’s one thing.
Living it is quite another.
… do you really wanna live forever?
… can you handle anyone or everyone you know, essentially randomly dying?
People are gonna actually have to answer those questions, at least to themselves, honestly.
And our culture is primarily one of consumerist escapism… so this is going to cause even more existential crises and psychoses than we have seen so far.
We’re gonna see a lot of people’s true colors.
A lot of people simply will not be able to cope, they’ll implode, collapse in on themselves, or maybe explode outwardly.
And then, after that, we’ll have to see how many people are actually any kind of competent and effective, at living, at resisting… after all the toys and treats go away.
I completely agree. I’ve been swimming in these realizations for the last year. I knew Trump’s second term would be bad, but this has gone well beyond where I thought it would go.
I keep asking the question How did we get here? and Why?. None of those have any good answers. We’ve passed off-ramp after off-ramp over the last 20 years and now our nation is in a state of genuine peril, and yet so many people remain ignorant still. Even seeing fellow Leftists proclaim about the “Revolution” with joy makes my stomach churn. Masses of people are being disappeared. I get that these posts are probably a way to cope, but my mind tends toward the human side of things. I don’t care about figures or standards; I see pain and suffering. These are lives we’ll never get back. We’re going to lose tens of thousands of people in the next months and every one will leave an impact on the people around them.
You raise a good point about the aftershocks. I’ve been thinking of that same aspect. Millennials and Gen Z already show signs of severe trauma across the generation. Social withdrawal, clout-seeking, AI/Religious psychosis, anti-social behavior (like TikTok public nuisance content) – and that’s from the living conditions before Trump’s second term. Ironically, that trauma led Gen Z to become more conservative – see trad-wide/manosphere content – and to back the alt-right.
The USA population was already crumbling. Look at how many people are physically disabled, mentally disabled, emotionally over-burdened. Drug addictions incl. alcohol; Regular mental breakdowns; Compassion fatigue; Cyber harassment – Our population is profoundly sick.
I worry for what will remain when whatever uprisings happen, happen. We’re losing more people every day this regime holds power. 365 days. 365 days of suicides, mental breakdowns, psychosis, murders, new addictions. If standards continue to escalate, we’ll soon be seeing bombs; which kill some and injure many. Whoever remains will be left with the momentous task of rebuilding a functioning society while caring for a population in which the majority of people are disabled, many are delusional, and all require constant food, water, and maybe medical attention.
I’m not sure if I’d rather die before the action, burn as the USA turns in on itself, or cling through the hell that will unravel and be left sifting through the pieces… if there even is another end to this regime.
I can’t really think of much to add to that… you and I seem to very much be on the same wavelength.
Oh, I guess I can update some of your numbers.
I used to be the data analyst / db admin for a large non profit of homeless shelters.
The PIT counts, the numbers we use as our ‘total homeless’ count basis?
They’re bullshit, the methodology is garbage, and the way its … attempted to be implemented is also garbage.
I was at one point able to compare our much more detailed data set of … need, number of people calling in basically, for some kind of help, vs how many we actually could help, or redirect to another non prof or something to get help… vs the PIT numbers for our area.
Long story short, a few years back, you needed to multiply the PIT by roughly 3x to 5x, to get an actual accurate number.
Carry that forward to now, the economic devastation that is occuring?
We are currently looking at somewhere in the ballpark of 5 to 10 million people homeless for at least 3 consecutive months, where homeless is defined as: you do not actually live at a location that you can recieve mail at, or you live in a homeless shelter, or you have been couch surfing (you’re living somewhere you aren’t on the lease for) for at least 3 months.
There are so many people who live in cars or RVs… because it used to be legal to do that. After the Grants Pass decision, it basically isn’t anymore, anywhere in the US. So your ‘home’ can and will be impounded and you will become ‘fully’ homeless.
Living on the streets is now also just actually illegal in basically all of the US. Everytime you hear a cop say that some encampment was contacted and offered support services before they cleared the encampment?
What that means is the cops gave people the numbers of shelters that are compmetely full and have no excess capacity.
Hows that for spin phrasing, eh? Makes the people in the encampment seem voluntarily noncompliant, when the truth is the cops gave them either utterly useless advice, or commands that are impossible to follow, depending on how you wanna look at it.
So yeah. 5 to 10 million people are homeless right now, thats gonna get worse, and a significant proportion of those people die from exposure, starvation, disease, develop a drug addiction, die from that, or just fun ole fashioned physical violence.
And, last I checked, its basically 60% of Americans right now, who if they missed a one paycheck, or had one $500+ sudden expense, well they’d have to go (even further) into debt for that, so basically 60% of the country is one bad day away from a fuse that lights and then blows up 3 to 12 months later in a debt death spiral, now they’re also homeless.
They’ll likely end up in the DHS/ICE/FEMA gulag archipelago that’s been hastily built to handle all the deportations, or basically its cousin or some specific subsection of it.
fuuuuuuuck I mean I knew it was bad, but… fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck
Yeah.
…yeah.
Thats how bad it is.
I guess now maybe you better understand … why I am attempting to describe and convey … how bad it actually is and likely would get if things went ‘hot’ in terms of active armed resistance.
So hey, there, what caused this, how did we get here?
Full answer is complicated, but big parts of the answer are: vanity, selfishness, convenience, complacency, ignorance, normalcy bias.
Yeah, those are holodomor / holocaust numbers.
Thats how fucking bad this is.
what the first Civil War was fought over Slaves. Literal human resources were right up their with land as far as property value and ability to continue to earn future value. Enshrining slaves as property forever is virtually the only difference in the confederate constitution.
Lincoln was the first presidential ticket with a northern pres and vp at a time when we deliberately had an equal number of southern and northern states and a bunch of territories to be brought into the union out west. Previously it was possible for a southern pres or vp to enforce this fake equality that couldn’t last because the pres could veto and the vp could vote to break a tie. Once you break that tie you can’t put it back you can now add more northern states without issue.
What were they worried about losing as they lost ground in the house and senate again? Their property and future earnings from that property. It’s popular to quote Lincoln saying he would free none or all of the slaves if he could save the union but that doesn’t tell you what the war was about. They went to war so they could keep their slaves and We went the war so we could keep the southern states instead of having an enemy on our doorstep.
To be fair, you also went to war because the fuckers shot first.
What OP doesn’t mention is that the memes are gonna be so on point!!
Finally. A comment about something that will actually happen.
I mean, I’m not joking, a good portion of humans need humor in the darkest hours, and creativity is boosted by all kinds of overwhelming emotions & chemicals.
I’m right there with you as a Laird of Levity.
… we are gonna get executed by our own sides due to the sheer dankness of our misunderstood memes, aren’t we?
/s won’t save you
