Here’s the full question (since Lemmy has title character limits): “With all the stuff going on with this administration and the Supreme Court, is it gonna take a revolution to stop this damn administration and the SCOTUS from curtailing people’s freedoms and liberties at this point because we’re way past the point of reform?”
Oh and how do you fight doomerism these days?
This is going to sound counter Intuitive to the Emotional need for revolution. But the best way to fight back is community networks and finding what is needed by marginalized groups and create programs that help those groups and organize around that action. Also making those networks distributed so it makes it harder for Authoritarians to squash but you can still navigate between the networks to get the resources you need.
A good example of this was the breakfast programs the black panthers started. If you read how the government tried to dismantle those programs and failed. You will see how effective they can be.
This is the best solution. If we can no longer count on our “representatives” to represent our needs in governance, we must build our own separate governance from the ground up to help one another. The Black Panthers knew they couldn’t trust the racist US government to help the black community, so they organized to help the community themselves. They mostly did community support projects, but they did have a set of armed members who essentially acted as a local police force since they also definitely couldn’t trust the police to protect them.
With the new surveyance methods available to the regime, this is going to get harder and harder.
That’s why face to face organizing is critical. Small groups distributed with common goal. None of that let’s change our profile pictures bullshit. Building real connections, is key. Internet activism is a lie. It is doing nothing but it makes you fill like you did something and social media companies use that to control the masses into apathy.
I’m not saying communication is not important but it will be on private point to point communication with in your local network. Also using stuff like Meshtactic or ham radios are great for emergency response. Be it natural disasters or human caused crises.
True, but there are ways to still communicate secretly, especially if you only need to organize locally.
Yes. We literally need to arrest all of these Israeli backed politicians and oligarchs for treason and crimes against humanity. We need to seize all of their assets to repair our data security and restore our economy. We will need a constitutional convention and we will need to fully reform our system to make sure this level of corruption is never possible again.
No but you have bigger problems than the two you mentioned. There is so much injustice baked into the system that you will never get rid of it without some kind of revolution.
Maybe a velvet revolution is possible but I firmly believe it is impossible to fix the U.S. through gradual change.
Yes, sadly, we won’t.
This clusterfuck is ultimately the product of broken society. You won’t fix the society by starting a revolution - you’ll just replace one set of bad guys with worse ones.
What does fix it?
The correct question is: “How can I protect myself from the broken society impacting my life”
Well no, because in aggregate people will fail at protecting themselves, or else it wouldn’t be a broken society. You can’t solve a coordination problem with advice to defect.
I wouldn’t say we’re past the point of reform, we lack the political will in our elected representatives and the numbers to force the issue. It is possible, but very unlikely, that we could flip the house and senate with enough progressive politicians that reform would be possible. However the establishment democratic party is unwilling to take the necessary steps or support the needed candidates. Their aim seems to be to become more centrist than they already were and maintain the status quo.
Unfortunately though the reality of the situation is very complex, ambiguous, and inundated with misinformation. Most reforms in the federal government won’t change the policies in red states, which are by far more egregious than what’s happening in Washington. While it’s likely true that there are no true red states, just gerrymandered purple states, there are still a sizable portion of the US population that want some or all of what’s going on in red states and the federal government.
There doesn’t seem to be enough political will among the left to carry out a revolution. Even if there was, there are almost as many right wingers (who are better armed, equipped, and trained) who would stand in opposition and turn the revolution into the second civil war.
Realistically while there are things that could be done to mitigate or stop the far right, not enough people seem to have the bravery, resources, and will to do what needs to be done.
Embrace the doom.
Doomerism will not get you anywhere - embrace revolutionary optimism instead
Optimism didn’t get me anywhere either.
Well, it got me disappointed, misanthropic, and cynical. I guess that’s somewhere.
Is there any way you can channel that disappointment into stuff like organizing and studying socialism?
Turning disappointment into deeper and more intractable disappointment?
Doesn’t seem productive.
Especially because it involves dealing with people, further sharpening my misanthropy.
Are you a nihilist? Not assuming anything, just asking.
I’m an absurdist, which is a nihilist who’s pretending they understand the joke
