• OpenPassageways@lemmy.zip
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    18 hours ago

    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.

    • TangledHyphae@lemmy.world
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      1 day ago

      Can you imagine siding with the political party that got completely decimated by a career criminal on a national level?

  • N0body@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    2 days ago

    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.

    • ByteJunk@lemmy.world
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      2 days ago

      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”.

      • Dashi@lemmy.world
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        2 days ago

        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.

        • ByteJunk@lemmy.world
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          2 days ago

          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.

            • ByteJunk@lemmy.world
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              2 hours ago

              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.

    • SwingingTheLamp@midwest.social
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      1 day ago

      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…

      • LibertyLizard@slrpnk.net
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        2 days ago

        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.

      • Asafum@feddit.nl
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        2 days ago

        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!

            • Flocklesscrow@lemm.ee
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              2 days ago

              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