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I’m going to be ignoring the news for the next couple years. “Trump Did Something Horrific,” followed by nothing of any consequence but “raising awareness.”
Wake me up when there’s a real resistance.
Ah yes the embodiment of the French Revolutionaries spirit. Paraphrasing the slogan, wasn’t it something like
“wake me up my brothers after the king gets beheaded, why would I go out with my pitchfork if nothing’s gonna happen”.
I can’t speak to others but it’s exhausting. All the “did something illegal” “got egg on the face of the US” “made a clown of himself”. I can only be outraged for so long before I’m burned out. I’ve voted every election big and small. I’ve argued and talked with people about how bad this could be. I’ve told people who didn’t know there are still literal wars going on and how there is an avenue for ww3. People don’t care or they think trump is the one to see us through and any changes he wants to make are good.
What else can I do? I’m not going to take up arms because I still believe in our democracy.
get organized! there are loads of community-based action groups that provide mutual aid services. the democratic socialists of America is a great example but there are plenty of other options if that’s not for you
Just like I’ve been telling my queer friends: some days you fight; some days you rest. You cannot fight if you don’t take care of yourself.
Looking at US politics from across the pond, there seems to be a healthy dose of activism, except it’s exclusively online.
Unfortunately nowadays this is totally irrelevant, because it’s so easy to counter by anyone with money to burn.
When people have actually gathered (mostly unions) they have found success.
Except all the college students who got arrested/kicked out for pro-palestinian protests.
Too small, but an interesting example.
In many countries, and across history, universities are the breeding ground of anti-establishment protests. Young people with a strong desire to change the world, not yet shackled by the burdens of society and all that.
Except that in the US, students are chained down with massive debt they can’t escape from, so that they can be kept on a leash.
be sure to hashtag that resistance!
And smash that like button!
I’m not American and will do the same. The amount of artificial and inflated drama is just unbearable. Not for another four years.
“Trump said this unacceptable thing!!!1!” followed by a few days of outrage, nothing changes, then he says another stupider shit a few days layer and the cycle continues.
In a way I’m sure the media are very happy for that Trump win. They’re gonna have some drama every fucking day.
If there is no enforcement then there is no law.
There is enforcement, if you don’t have enough income or if you have the wrong skin tone-
Trump will go down in history as the world’s most successful career criminal.
Can you imagine siding with the political party that got completely decimated by a career criminal on a national level?
I bet people avoid you in your personal life.
Actually all MAGA people I know are extremely happy and successful, 300 of us are meeting up in person next week. You wouldn’t believe the amount of love these groups have.
Yeah, cults tend to have a lot of “Love”. I hope they have Flavor-aide at your meetup.
No we’re just functional adults in the real world, you should give that a try sometime.
Functioning adults don’t wear “Real men wear diapers” T-shirts while fellating an 80 year old.
Imagine siding with the dude who got mugged and not the mugger smh
I think you meant serial rapist, paedophile, fraudster and insurrectionist, who has the support of a third of the country and who knows how much money.
The Democrats just have unsuccessful career criminals.
How about we do something about it instead of expecting someone else to?
It’s the perennial coordination problem. Consider these truths: 1. Anybody who stands up alone will get viciously hammered down. 2. If a large number of people stand up together, they can make a difference. 3. People have to trust others to stand up with them, otherwise see #1.
How do we organize a large crowd of people that trust each other without the people in power catching wind of it and viciously hammering down the organizers? It sure would help to have some support from people already in positions of power…
You go first. Let us know what and how it worked out.
I don’t even know what this text is in reference to and I have no concrete suggestions immediately. But I will be thinking, connecting, and sharing in the coming months as a strategy emerges. Trumpism can still be defeated. The election was plan A but it’s time to come up with plan B. I am thinking that it’s going to take massive organized civil disobedience. We directly disrupt their ability to govern and harm marginalized people.
But it’s going to take more than just me, so I ask everyone here to be ready and participate in whatever capacity you can.
I went to DC and yelled at a bunch of brutalist buildings. I’m sure someone in one of those knows a guy who knows someone who sometimes gets close enough to see a representative. I did my part!
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The 60s did happen.
The part of the 60s that enacted change was not peaceful.
That said, here is an especially relevant section of a document from 1963:
[ We have waited for more than 340 years for our constitutional and God given rights. The nations of Asia and Africa are moving with jetlike speed toward gaining political independence, but we still creep at horse and buggy pace toward gaining a cup of coffee at a lunch counter. Perhaps it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging darts of segregation to say, “Wait.” But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate filled policemen curse, kick and even kill your black brothers and sisters; when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six year old daughter why she can’t go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see ominous clouds of inferiority beginning to form in her little mental sky, and see her beginning to distort her personality by developing an unconscious bitterness toward white people; when you have to concoct an answer for a five year old son who is asking: “Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?”; when you take a cross county drive and find it necessary to sleep night after night in the uncomfortable corners of your automobile because no motel will accept you; when you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs reading “white” and “colored”; when your first name becomes “nigger,” your middle name becomes “boy” (however old you are) and your last name becomes “John,” and your wife and mother are never given the respected title “Mrs.”; when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tiptoe stance, never quite knowing what to expect next, and are plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of “nobodiness”–then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait. There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over, and men are no longer willing to be plunged into the abyss of despair. I hope, sirs, you can understand our legitimate and unavoidable impatience. You express a great deal of anxiety over our willingness to break laws. This is certainly a legitimate concern. Since we so diligently urge people to obey the Supreme Court’s decision of 1954 outlawing segregation in the public schools, at first glance it may seem rather paradoxical for us consciously to break laws. One may well ask: “How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?” The answer lies in the fact that there are two types of laws: just and unjust. I would be the first to advocate obeying just laws. One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that “an unjust law is no law at all.”]
https://www.africa.upenn.edu/Articles_Gen/Letter_Birmingham.html
Yet another reminder that most Americans don’t understand how the government works. What is one Dem senator going to do in a government that is 100% controlled by Republicans?
Voters need to do something and actually give the Dems a majority before complaining that they don’t get anything done.
“I wrote a law that we’re not going to enforce!”
- The lady who passes her husband insider info on deals being made in congress such that his stock trades are near-miraculous despite insider trading being horribly unethical for a senator and also illegal, tooEdit: ooppps. wrong senator. (Didn’t pelosi say something similar?)
That’s Pelosi, Warren is the American Indian
thats pelosi, warren is a saint compared to that crony
Is it really a law if it’s unenforceable?
*selectively enforced against poor people
This was the last time i vote for a dem candidate. they pay mouth service to progressive policies, but at the end of the day, they do next to nothing for us.
back in in the 2010s when obama was president, there was a time when the dems controlled the house AND the senate at the same time. we still didn’t get any real progressive shit passed. the only thing i can think of is daca and obamacare. we didn’t get single payer, universal nationalized healthcare, we didn’t get robust protections for the working class, we didn’t responsibly pull out of iraq or afghanistan, the environment is fucked and there’s nothing that we can do about it anymore, big banks got bailed out at the expense of the working class, university cost was and has continued to be at an all time high. They didn’t fix the gerrymandering the gop has been getting away with. They didn’t set term limits on justices. they didn’t fight back when the Rs blocked merick garland. They did nothing to fix the broken electoral system. They did nothing to fix the economic policies set in the reagan era. they did nothing to set a law banning PACs, lobbyists or special interests. the only thing the dem party has going for it is that they are not literally the party of fascists.
2 weeks before the election wasn’t the time to start getting excited about a third party. The time for third partying is now, and keep it up until the next one. I’m not going to forgive the dem party for their inaction and they should absolutely be punished by no longer existing as the opposition party.
This was the last time i vote for a dem candidate.
I’m sure that’ll fix things right up!
This reformist sentiment is how we got here with the Dems.
I could understand reform to an extent but holy fuck come on. They’ve demonstrated they really truly don’t give a fuck about the leftist ideals they carry around like a vestigial organ.
Kamala “Do Not Come” Harris Joe “Nothing will fundamentally change” Biden (Bonus) Joe “Strongest union president ever until it might impact the economy” Biden Nancy “Insider trading is cool when I do it” Pelosi
They exist as the last wall between more serious leftists and actual change.
They co-opt and absorb grassroots movements and then talk them down into a whimper. (e.g. BLM, defund the police, single-payer, etc.) Usually the discourse devolves into “well it might be hard and take some time, and it’s something we’re not used to, and some people might be mad too, and oh the economy and jobs or something” and that’s that. Dismissed until the next crisis, where we’ll rinse and repeat.
Notice the verbiage when they’re talking: “middle-class” this “middle-class” that. How often do they talk about the lower class? They usually don’t, because they primarily want to appeal to the affluent and educated. Meanwhile actual leftist organization meet people where they are on the regular - hungry, unsheltered, endangered - instead of sitting at galas and fundraisers sucking the big green dollary dick and feeling really sad and concerned about those people on the street. But hey maybe more spikes on a bench and more camp raids will solve the problem. After all, they’re making the place unsightly for their affluent, educated friends.
“When they go low we go high” is a hollow appeal to civility they use to say “aw shucks guys we tried real hard but then Republicans said no”. How many times have Republicans whipped out that “one simple trick” to leverage their position? How many times are Democrats gonna say “hey man that’s not cool” until they realize that honor or decorum are like boyscout merrit badges in the face of an opposition that demonstrates they don’t give a fuck about any of that?
Right or “left” or anything in between - any time there’s a labor dispute you can bet (and you’d be quite succesful) that within the first WEEK they’ll be drumming up distrust amongst the working class:
They tell their fellow workers through the media “these union workers are making your shit cost more. Here’s how much their asking for in wage increases.”
To ask “well, couldn’t the company just make a little bit less” is heresy. How could you suggest such a thing? They’re a business dummy, they have to make money! Line goes up! Line go down is bad! Jobs and yadda yadda.
They frame the majority of the conversation in terms of monetary or fringe benefits for the workers. They report very little on the safety and PTO/QOL demands of the union.
In the case of Biden and railroad workers, they say “hey just play along and let the rail companies strategize and undermine you for a few more years while we try really super megahard to get you what you want”. Newsflash if you didn’t know: the element of surprise (within a short time frame) is important for strikes. Now that the companies know the union is willing to take it to that level, the railroad companies being in a position of power and control are in an advantageous position with that knowledge. And by the way nothing was ever done about the safety concerns the rail workers had with PSR or lean operation (or the being on call constantly), and shortly after Biden put down that strike the East Palestine disaster happened. And yeah those people aren’t done with their suffering either. But hey at least you, out precious affluent, educated voter didn’t have to do anything to support your fellow workers or deal with any upset in your life.
And then there’s the laser-focus on identity issues. WHILE IMPORTANT, you know what most helps people in these groups fight for their rights? Better working conditions. Better benefits. Better healthcare. Better work-life balance. More time off to organize, more time off to participate in politics, or spend time with family, or do hobbies, or relax, or do anything that might give them solid footing against the ebbs and flows of capital and fight for themselves and their own rights and communities. Not that help from more advantaged people isn’t useful, but when that’s step one instead of step four or five it comes off as a “white man’s burden” approach. Give them the foundation that every working person deserves.
No one’s required to vote for your dog shit, milquetoast party and their old crusty ass kingmakers. And before you start coming at me with the usual stuff, I voted for Harris to buy more time for vulnerable people, leftists, and whatever semblance of free expression and journalism we have left. I sucked it up and put my opinions aside for a bit.
And wow what a fucking waste. How could that party fuck up so bad? Maybe they didn’t pay enough money to political consultants? Surely that’s the reason.
I’m really sympathetic to all you say. I get the frustration and anger - I’ve had it for years.
Alas…
They exist as the last wall between more serious leftists and actual change.
It’s not a wall. More of a roadblock that can be moved or even removed. We’ve seen progress, which I get is easy to forget.
The issue is this: pointing all this out and being vocal about the issues is important but does not itself solve the problem. We can protest and complain all we want and it does not result in actual change. And this is kind of the central problem - folks such as yourself (and me, at one time) harp on how bad things are under both parties and even refuse to participate. We don’t get politically involved, don’t vote, and just complain.
That does not move the needle and never will.
As many have pointed out, with Democrats you can move the needle. You can elect and re-elect progressive candidates and push elected officials to enact progressive legislation. It does actually happen but too often this fact get’s forgotten or ignored in all the doom and gloom. Meanwhile, because we didn’t get 100% of what we wanted and kept complaining about how nothing changes (when in fact it does) we end up with a neo-fascist authoritarian regime with which there will be NO negotiation, NO active or meaningful protests and during which we will take many many steps backward. Seriously, we are looking at a Christian Nationalist takeover of government and all that entails. This is REALLY bad.
A cynical and less tolerant person would say “stop complaining and do something about it”. I would say “ok, I hear your complaints and agree. What are we going to do about it?”
If you truly want to see how much effort the Democrat party wastes punching Left, then stick with your convictions about organnizing and voting third party up through the next presidential election.
I’m done. I can’t with them anymore. I’ve voted dem every single election since 08 and they can’t seem to beat a literal fascist 2 out of 3 times. It’s not because they aren’t the progressive party, it’s because they don’t actually do anything. they talk, but don’t act.
they talk, but don’t act
The main messaging from the Harris campaign seemed to consist of:
- the economy is fine
- immigrants are fentanyl carrying criminals and we need to build the border wall
- fracking good
- war good (continued expansion of Israel, keep arming Ukraine instead of pushing for a diplomatic resolution, and let’s invade Iran next with the most lethal fighting force in the world)
- what, do you want a DANG CHEETO in the white house?
They don’t walk the walk of a pro worker party, but they sure as shit don’t talk the talk either.
when the hell did the dem party become the party of lethal military, border wall and fracking? It’s like they wanted to alienate their base.
And right on cue, they admitted that the 30-day humanitarian aid deadline for Gaza was a lie. I mean we knew it was, since the deadline was conveniently after the election, but it was still an insult.
