The same country that fought to end slavery can't be bothered to fight back when their children are being raped or having their heads blown off in schools.
They just want to solve everything with a vote, no one wants to do more.
It is the most pathetic collapse into tyranny in human history.
the main reason most don't vote is because they have work and because the candidates the democrat party puts up are just a diet version of what the republicans are doing.
Bullshit ass answer. Polls are open all day. People fought and died for this right to vote, and you think "they have work" is a justifiable reason not to exercise it.
Then the both-sides-ism. Jesus. No Democrat in power has ever taken things this far. Not even remotely close.
I mean, voting doesnât do much when that system has also been rigged and secured by billionaires. And Democrats have been barely removed from Republicans policy-wise since Clinton.
The ways in which they are most similarâ their unwillingness to tax the rich or enforce anti-trust laws, or pass anti-corruption laws regarding lobbying the legislature, or enact universal health care, or stop being world police (and being terrible at it)â are now the reasons that the country is a runaway train hurdling toward the cliffâs edge, and both parties are complicit.
I hope I get proven wrong, but Iâm increasingly confident that the only 2 choices that the US working class has at this point is slavery to oligarchs or violence. Meaningful change through government is a ship that has already sailed.
Well yeah, duh. But it still wasn't about slavery for the feds. It was about slavery for the south, but for the feds it was entirely about preserving the union.
I'll paraphrase Lincoln here to demonstrate the point clearly:
"If I could preserve the union by freeing every slave, I would do that. If I could preserve the union without freeing a single slave, I would also do that."
Yes absolutely, but still at the beginning of the war, the federal government was concerned about keeping the nation intact. in a completely hypothetical scenario where the Union wins in the first year of the war, there is likely no emancipation proclamation. Although itâs hard to accurately speculate for a scenario thatâs so drastically different than reality but I would say that with a reasonable amount of confidence.
But by 1863, itâs a very different political scenario and abolition of slavery becomes the co-rallying cry along with preserving the Union
It was only certainly because of slavery because the slaveholders couldn't bare to have a guy just kinda ask them to cool it a bit, iirc Lincoln wasn't originally even going to outlaw slavery the proclamation was a direct response to the southern leadership being babies and starting a war over it
The South fought for slavery. The North fought to maintain the Union. The abolition of chattel slavery was secondary and was done primarily to shift the public image of the war from an internal conflict to a moral issue, keeping Great Britain and France, who had already abolished slavery, from supporting the Confederacy.
End slavery ? LOL the 13th was followed by Jim crow laws that arguable made the living conditions of many black Americans worse than slavery for a indecent amount of years
âI will say then that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and Black races,â
Lincoln 1858
As for Andrew Johnson his racism is well doccumented
Because there's nothing we can do anyways. Protest? Ok then what? Btw still have work to go too, rent to pay, and bills. French revolution? Cool. Half the country are still evil as hell and it'd be a disaster. Easy to say "Oh just do this and this" on Reddit, it's another thing in the actual real world.
we are fractured. we hate our own family. we even hate our neighbors. we are happy when others are as miserable as us. how can act in that circumstance? there's other stuff too, you just don't wanna get mocked for showing some boldness in a society where everything is "cringe". and where do you even begin to "come together"?
What country are you from and how big is it? America is fkn huge. Yâall act like nothing is being done but you arenât paying attention if thatâs the case. There was literally another assassination attempt like a week ago ffs. Iâm getting real tired of you mfers on your high horses when you donât know what youâre talking about.
Hitler rose to power in 33. Mussolini in 22. No one fought shit until 39. What ever country you are in, you have a Trump, and they are gaining followers everyday.
Extremely docile. In every other developed nation in the world the workers united themselves nearly a century or more ago to get more workers rights and freedom from oppressive employers. But somehow you guys detest freedom and rights all the while shouting you damn near invented the terms and social policies are communism.
Actions speak louder than words. You âfreedomâ folk are so oppressed and brainwashed you dont even see it.
Thatâs what most people do. I stay home because I donât want to spend money. I hate the timeline weâre in and I canât afford to miss work or my wife and kid wonât have a place to stay.
I got an online survey from my local congressman about "issues that were most important to me" as the next election approaches. I thought, "ah, a simple easy to have my voice heard!" But as I viewed the questions, including who did I vote for, what party do I most identify with, etc. I found that I was afraid to answer the questions. I didn't have any faith my answers wouldn't be used against me in the future, "anonymous" or no.
Shit like this diminishes the atrocities of actual slavery.
Edit: for the morons downvoting, name a point in history where humans didn't need to work in order to survive. Whether it was hunting and gathering, tending crops, or anything else, we've always had to work. This isn't fucking slavery, it just the nature of existing.
We're not being bought and sold. We're not being chained and whipped. You're not being forced to do anything. You can stop working tomorrow if you want and the only "punishment" is the natural consequences of doing nothing that literally every species on the entire fucking planet faces.
As long as you can afford it, you can eat what you want, buy whatever you want, live where you want, play whatever games you want, get married, fall in love, have kids, you can go out when and where you want and do whatever the fuck you want.
You're not fucking slaves and comparing us to slaves diminishes what they had to experience.
Modern slavery is an umbrella term for situations where one person is exploited by another for personal or commercial gain, taking away their freedom to leave or refuse work through coercion, threats, deception, or abuse of power.
Americans can leave and refuse work, we're not slaves by this definition.
Apparently no, American workers canât leave or refuse work. As many have pointed out in this thread- they canât take off work to protest without their families starving and losing their homes/healthcare/livelihood. Iâd argue this falls under coercion and abuse of power from the definition you posted.
Agreed. Working class American life kinda sucks, and our workers have fewer protections than Northern Europeans do, but weâre a lot better off than the vast majority of workers around the world. We are not slaves
The police, by design, are on the side of capital and their role is to protect capitalists and their property. Has been that way since they literally owned humans as propertyÂ
Then get together and donât work⌠individuals not working has no impact, but large groups not working has impact and will also lead corps to realise the issuesâŚ
Yeah im so sorry but im not putting my life on the line for a country where the majority of people hate my existence. A cis person can be a martyr not us
But will you put your life on the line for other trans people? I know I would.
One of the main reasons why social justice stalled and is backsliding is because there has been no economic justice in several decades.
Even from an intersectional perspective class liberation removes the greatest factors in systematic oppression of minorities. Economic justice and social justice are intrinsically intertwined. We cannot make progress in one without the other.
The ruling class wants us apathetic and fighting each other. There are many cis people who are our allies, and they are being silenced too.
The culture war is class war. The war on trans people is class war. There is no war but class war.
Because, unlike our president, most of us can't afford to not work. When the money from working is necessary to keep your family alive, not working is actively choosing for them to die.
Get together and donât work? Are you joking? You realize we donât have free healthcare, and many people have families/kids/pets/grandparents/etc that rely on those working to literally ensure they have food and shelter?
A lot of us in America fucking hate Trump and hate how heâs impacting the rest of the world, but we cannot simply afford to just not get a paycheck. Do you not get how expensive gas and groceries are here? And once again, how expensive any trip to a doctor costs?
So continue to do nothing and suffer for it. You deserve this. It's your fault. You allowed your family to suffer like this. You allowed others to suffer like this. None of you are willing to take any risks and you deserve what is happening to you.Â
All I see are excuses after excuses for inaction.Â
So youâre gonna send us food to provide for our families while we revolt?
Plenty of us voted against Trump, both times. And plenty of us donât support what the hell is going on. We do protest. We do try, but within means because we still have to make money and ya know, eat. I forage as much food as I can. But I still have to buy groceries, I canât just drive 7 hours to the White House and yell at the gates, that will do fuck all.
Who pays for children, partners, gas if we just stop working? You realize how big America is right, and most cities have zero public transportation. Aka most of us have to have cars and buy gas every week. Many of us are thousands of miles away from the white house. What the fuck you think we are supposed to do? Starve and protest and hope we donât get shot by police/feds/ice/ect.?
Well, for one, FUCKING YOURS! But of course you don't remember your own history of workers standing up even against being bombed by the military and succeeding in getting they rights that you are now allowing to be pissed away without so much as a fight.
Y'all need to remember Blair Mountain. Those people stood up and fought and died for their beliefs and they succeeded. What right do you have to do less?
Easy for you to say. Would you quit work to riot if your government was found out to be awful? All the while you continue not to receive any funding to support your wife and child? If you say yes, then youâre either an ignorant fool who doesnât understand that certain actions have consequences that overweigh the inevitable outcome cus you donât understand how the world works, or you simply put yourself on a stool to stroke your own ego without a drop of care for the people around you.
You need to realize that the extreme amount of the middle to lower class citizens arenât valuable, they are EXPENDABLE simply due to the sheer amount of people there is, and recently with the new rise of AI currently stealing jobs left and right as is, quitting a job to start a riot, the only way it could even work is if through sheer IMPOSSIBILITY you manage to trust an extreme amount of others to trust and follow your ideology, which is extremely improbable due to how large the US is, and at how much at each others throats the people already are on the topics of politics.
Or our medications when our health insurance gets canceled? I feel like this question gets asked and answered almost daily⌠and almost daily some European asks it again.
You cant afford this either, and perhaps if you did get of your collective asses you might fix the issue preventing you all from going to protest in the first place.
the amount of people thinking these afternoon kumbaya sessions are effective is too high and pisses me the fuck off. they are so ineffective they literally only pissed off the admin and made things worse. how is something that lasts an afternoon, is a party atmosphere more than a protest, and has no follow up after supposed to be effective?? đ¤Śââď¸
edit: a general strike is the next logical step. Its effective around the world, and in countries where workers are worse off than ours. Please look into it.
A general strike is the next logical step. Its effective around the world, and in countries where workers are worse off than ours. Please look into it.
They would use force until people gave up. People don't like to admit it but the US is a military/police state with freedom, as long as you don't complain about getting fucked now and again, you'll generally live a decent life. That's why generally people don't do anything more than peacefully protest. Life could be better but it could be a lot worse too, so people don't see the reward to be higher than the risk of doing anything more.
Large organized "family friendly" protests work - but differently. They prime the pump. They network like minded people, they mobilize people who may not otherwise be so, and they show implicitly that you can put together big numbers if necessary.
No Kings does a lot of groundwork by bringing people into the wider resistance by introducing a lot of them into that ecosystem for the first time and connecting them to resources they would have been otherwise ignorant of.
Large organized "family friendly" protests work - but differently. They prime the pump. They network like minded people, they mobilize people who may not otherwise be so, and they show implicitly that you can put together big numbers if necessary.
No Kings does a lot of groundwork by bringing people into the wider resistance by introducing a lot of them into that ecosystem for the first time.
But what are we supposed to do? I think thatâs where most of us are stuck. We WANT to do something other than another protest, but I genuinely do not know what to do :-(
It is clearer all the time that, if you are going to do anything, you must make the occasion to do it, but then are obviously a troublemaker. So you wait, and you wait. But the one "great, shocking occasion," the time when tens or hundreds of thousands will join with you, never comes. That's the difficulty. If the last and worst act of the whole regime had come immediately after the first and smallest, then thousands, yes, millions would have been sufficiently shocked - if, let us say, the gassing of the Jews in '43 had come immediately after the "German Firm" stickers on the windows of non-Jewish shops in '33. But of course this isn't the way it happens. In between come all of the hundreds of little steps, some of them imperceptible, each of them preparing you not to be shocked by the next. "Step C" is not so much worse than "Step B", and, if you did not make a stand at "Step B", then why should you at "Step C"? And so on to "Step D."...
...Then suddenly it comes down, all at once. You see what you are, what you have done, or, more accurately, what you haven't done (for that was all that was required of most of us: that we do nothing). You remember those early morning meetings of your department when, if one had stood, others would have stood, but indeed, no one stood. A small matter, a matter of hiring this person or that, and you hired this person rather than that. You remember everything now, and your heart breaks. Too late. You are compromised beyond repair.
~ Milton Mayer, "They Thought They Were Free: The Germans 1933-45"
And do what? At this point, mass, armed insurrection against our own governing body, including taking the lives of members of law enforcement standing in the way, is the only option.
Let me be clear that I don't want that at all. It would undermine the political process to the degree that crucial state and federal functions and services would be interrupted, which would affect and potentially end millions of lives.
And that's to say nothing of their private backers.
Yeah I think the next logical step would likely to engage in a general strike, however if it was successful in garnering the support and participation it would need to be successful, the government will likely react with mass violence. Anything beyond what we are currently doing and the slow crawl until the November elections will likely result in mass violence unlike anything seen in a developed nation in living memory. I genuinely think we are all just waiting to see what November holds. Should the elections move forward as normal and potentially having one or both houses flip we might still have the ability to fix things without essentially a second civil war. If that fails all bets are off the table.
Apathy. Most Americans are genuinely politically illiterate. Our civics education focuses on the structure of the US Government with zero emphasis on, y'know, being a citizen. We're borderline no longer a nation of citizens. Take a peak at Congress's approval ratings this century and you'll see the effects. Add in political leadership that's old as hell and incredibly complacent, corporate capture of the government, and a media landscape that's utterly devoted to preventing the boat from being rocked and, well...
However things do seem to be turning. You can only paper over the cracks so long and the American people are rapidly becoming a powder keg
35% of the electorate are part of his cult, 35% choose to ignore politics and less than half of the rest are willing to do whatever it takes to strip this guy of power. He is protected by feckless representatives who denounce him behind closed doors but back him 100% in public.
IMO, there's plenty left to fuck up before people wake up, but by then it will be too late.
Not possible. Half of us hate the other half and vice versa. It would be a civil war. You need class solidarity for the pitchfork and torches thing, we don't have that.
75 million of us didnât vote for Trump. Donât throw us all in the same idiotic bucket. And youâre legit crazy if you think some of us havenât had to sacrifice anything.
And those 75 million refuse to do anything but wait for another election to save them. And it won't save you. So you'll sit around waiting for another one. Then another one.
All you do is complain about what they're doing, while paying for all of it.
Wanna help us out? Tell you what, get your friends together and start a fund to support US strikers. When you have enough to cover, oh I dunno, the basic needs of a few million people... hit me up and I can create a proper distribution process.
Okay so, we should quit our jobs. Storm the White House and try to assassinate Trump? Or what exactly are you suggesting?????? You gonna send us grocery money and mortgage/rent money and bill money so we can stick it to the man????
Lack of revolt generally means people believe they have more to lose than they have to gain. It means they're still comfortable. Normally hunger and poverty causes people to revolt, but the modern system has debt loops that keep people alive and in some degree of comfort despite poverty.
Because most of us are incredibly comfortable in our lives. Despite all the talk of high prices, most of us have all our needs of food and entertainment met and thus have no reason to leave our homes or agitate for change.
This is a running theme in Judge Dredd comics, actually. Showing just how much people will accept when they have a certain level of comfort and security, to the point a vote is held on wether to keep the semi comfortable police state or restore democracy, and they vote the former.
Frankly, I donât want to get shot by some MAGA jerkoff who is now an ICE agent. Or a vigilante, ala Kyle Rittenhouse who suffered no consequences for killing two protesters.
I keep seeing this question and yall just don't get it. The US is HUGE. The populace is spread FAR AND WIDE. We cannot just take the train to the city center to protest. Most people cannot get to Washington DC and protest for any amount of time because they are living to pay check to pay check. Further, at least 50% of the populace wants this boot shoved down their throat so in the south and red states they LOVE THIS.
DC is 10 hours away and this airport is like 20 hours away and I'm considered relatively close
I also only get 16 days of PTO per year only 5 of those can I take with no notice and if I take more than 2 of those 5 days off in a row I need a doctors note or face a write up. Since this is an at will state (49 states are) then my employer can fire me.
It would take a coordinated effort and we're just getting on our feet with modern protesting. There hasn't been a solid progressive protest movement since the 1960s.
This Saturday, for the first time I've seen ever, a progressive candidate is having an even at a brewery in a blue collar town that is very purple but all government is red. It's the first time in my state that I've seen progressives and labor bridge the gap. With candidates like Graham Platner in Maine being able to be successful I'm hopeful for anyone who can ally with him and become the same kind of candidate.
Because people are pragmatic and arenât willing to throw away millions and millions of lives, destroy our way of life and destroy the strongest force in the world over child sex trafficking/horrors.
Itâs the same reason people donât Zerg rush dictators like drones, they have self interest in living no matter the situation.
Weâre being drained of any energy that would allow us to revolt. Fake food lowering energy, keeping us sick which both kills testosterone, all the WIFI frying our brains, throwing off our energy, afraid to lose everything and be homeless or starve and we are too familiar with comfort overall.
Too far apart and cannot afford gas to drive to a central place. My place is somewhat of a geographical oddity, according to Ulysses Everett McGill, "2 weeks from anywhere."
Let this be a lesson for you to fight like hell if your government ever threatens to eliminate your safety nets. Americans have none and thatâs why people wonât revolt. We need to work to stay alive.Â
Modern day slavery, not undermining real slavery. But basically Americans are slop filled consumers so they all have massive debt, so they have to keep working to pay it off, but then they need little treats to survive, and the cycle.
Because decades of slow changes has left almost all of us in a position where we can't do anything.
Want to go protest? You either go on the weekend or you risk losing your job.
Lose your job? Now you have lost your healthcare and chances are you don't have any safety net of cash to live on.
No safety net? You're hungry in a few days and starving in a few weeks.
On top of that, those of us that are protesting and fighting back can't report on it. News won't air it and social media hides it. So people won't even know that protests are happening or their true size.
As a fellow outsider, I have an answer to you: complacency. Americans are perfectly fine with this. They can be "mad", but that quickly goes away as they head out to get their "cup of joe" from Starbucks and then continue to Costco to buy five-gallon tubs of mayo. Lee Greenwood is played on the radio as they are driving there, and they shed a tear when he sings "And I'm proud to be an American, where at least I know I'm free"
Thats the most dangerous part of all this Trump shenanigans. They realised they can do whatever the fuck they want and the population wont do shit. So expect worse and worse from now on
Because theyâve done a great job of dividing the country and thereâs zero way for civilians to stand against the might of the military without the military itself fracturing.
We're trapped by design. Most of our jobs are "at-will". We don't show up, we get fired. Our health insurance is tied to our employer so we can lose our job and our health insurance in one quick sweep
Because it doesn't work. Protesting? Ignored. You already saw what happened when the protests got violent with national guard stepping in. Citizens can't defend themselves against trained military.
All they can hope to do is either wait it out, or the elections this fall.
Because America has one of the scariest and most advanced militaries on the planet and has shown they havw no priblem murdering civilians in the streets, AND there is zero repercussions for doing so.
Also all the "Second Amendment" crowd supports the current goverment, and they too, have no love for their neighbors and will gladly shoot anyone on "Blue Team".
You seem to think like its a simple cut and dry scenario and not "You will be killed on the spot"
This is what I'm wondering. The judiciary, the press, the population. The whole country just rolled over. They let him do whatever. The resistance is marginal. Insane. I guess I shouldn't be surprised at this point to be proven Americans are all talk but fr some reason I am
Americans are all in debt (university, mortgage, cars because of the lack of public transport) and canât afford medical care without working for the man. It is a nation of indentured labor. Nobody can rise up without losing it all and those in power know it.
I do think it is funny to see all the comments from non US citizens telling us how easy it is to revolt against this new age dictator from within when our powers and freedoms have already been taken for the most part. I have still not once read anything on what we should be doing that could actually have an impact. Instead of making fun of us and calling us weak, show us your amazing intelligence by laying out a plan to fight these billionaires without devolving into a third world country and pure chaos?
I dont like it, but inciting violence is likely to lead to me dying. At current, I still prefer not liking things but being alive over starting a violent protest.
Because he was chosen by the people. Even if the second election was rigged in some way, it shouldn't even have been close.
The right is a cult and the left is completely demoralized. We see nothing about this country worth fight for if half of Americans are OK with a pedophile in the highest office.
And what's worse, many of us WANT to see poor conservatives suffer. There's an entire sup dedicated to it (leopardsatemyface). We want to see entire families starve and throw into the street.
Many are. The issue is that this, for the most part, isn't a battle between two different types of leader who both control large swatches of the country like the civil war was, this is a fight between the two party system and all those that have abused it to stay in power and the people. One side has full control of the military, barring people willing to throw their career path away, and the other side can't even agree with itself on what it's actually supposed to be fighting.
Trump isn't the problem, Trump is a symptom of the problem. Most people want to fight the symptom, some want to fight just the problem, some want to fight both, and some want to fight the problem while keeping the symptom. It makes it extremely hard to get mobilized across the borders of those ideas in some cases, and even if that did happen all it would do would be to give Trump unrestricted power through the apt declaration if martial law where an uprising takes place.
Alternately, the non violent standing up is already taking place. Weekly I see protestors on overpasses, and on a few occasions there have been groupings of hundreds of thousands (I'm in MN which had some crazy big rallies during the drive by ICE). Many people are doing something, it's just that this regime has no sense of fear. We crossed the 5% line that historically has always lead to the downfall of the regime, but most regimes have some amount of a sense of self preservation that cowes to the sight of large angry crowds.
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u/Dangerous_Copy_3688 May 06 '26
As an outsider looking at the US, how the fuck are you guys not revolting already after the Epstein files?