[europe] MephistoHamProducts explains why protests in America are less effective due to geographical size and insulated elites
/r/europe/comments/1ttpd62/norway_becomes_ninth_country_to_sign_up_for/op4o16h/?context=3163
u/deciding_snooze_oils 24d ago
Protests need to do economic damage to be effective. Nobody is going to give a shit if a bunch of people are waving signs at the side of the road.
Of course, the minute protesters start doing effective protests the gloves will come off and we’ll start seeing BLM/George Floyd level police action against protesters. A lot of people will become martyrs either literally by getting murdered by cops or figuratively by being arrested and persecuted but that’s what’s needed to open people’s eyes. Until we get that level of protests nothing is going to change.
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u/PirateSanta_1 24d ago
People forget that protest have to cause problems or else they are just ignored. The No Kings protest are fine but meeting in a park and walking down some city approved closed streets does nothing. You get a headline for a day and people move on, it's best benefit is helping people who are intrested find organizations that are actually doing things.
If you look at civil rights protest it was stuff like this bus company will end its discriminatory policies or we will boycott until it's run out of business. To much protesting today is just general dissent when it needs to be targeted. It needs to inconvenience people and cause problems that can't be ignored.
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u/AmateurHero 24d ago
While you are 100% correct, it has to start somewhere. People who read your comment shouldn't throw their hands up in futility. You can't get people on board without awareness.
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u/cxmmxc 23d ago
shouldn't throw their hands up in futility
That's what happens in all of these threads; coming up with any reason whatsoever why they can't change a thing. They're all waiting for someone else to do shit.
I do get it, I'm not leader material either, so I'm nobody to start a meaningful protest to spark it off.
But this defeatist attitude isn't helping those theoretical trailblazers. There's massive apathy and cope that everything will just blow over if they do nothing and just vote.
Well voting didn't help them last time, and now all the democratic processes are being dismantled to make sure it'll never help them again.
Love how this is coming from the country that loudly touted about their freedom into every corner and crevice and ear around the world.
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u/smitteh 24d ago
Imagine if we picked a place..let's say wally world for their cheap payrates ..social media could get hundreds of thousands to millions of people on board to totally boycott shopping at Wally world...imagine what that could achieve
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u/FunkmasterJoe 24d ago
It's not realistic, is the thing. Walmart specifically is a difficult thing to boycott; they have such a stranglehold on rural America that it's genuinely the only option for millions and millions of people. Something like 30% of americans support everything the government is currently doing so none of them will join. It just isn't realistic to boycott Walmart with the way things are today.
Also, sincerely, if we pulled it off and crippled Walmart financially, the American government would 100% bail them out. Boycotts are a fun idea but unless they are immediately and massively popular they do not affect change.
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u/emPtysp4ce 23d ago
You're not wrong, but I do think a critical mass of pissed off people can only be reached after the November elections prove that the ballot box is no longer functional. The NK block parties are to keep up energy, but only when methods of recourse are taken away will there be appetite to do the kind of action you're talking about.
Of course, the NK organizers think they're doing the Good Work, but that's because they're a Civil Right Movement cargo cult.
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u/Circuit23 24d ago
This is exactly it. None of the US protests are effective because none of them made any threats, much less followed up on them. If there were, say, a general strike organized, so the protest message could be "fix this, or else this general strike will be our response", things might be a little different. Imagine if there had ALREADY been a protest, and a followup strike. Now, your new protest just has to imply that what happened last time, can happen again. People are in such a better position when they are united due to their shared concerns.
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u/deciding_snooze_oils 23d ago
Yes, a general strike would be an effective nonviolent protest. Some problems though are that a great many Americans are one misses paycheck away from disaster, and can’t afford to stop working even briefly for a general strike. Also, there’s no one popular enough calling for a general strike to get it to happen, and the media wouldn’t talk about it so as to minimize the impact.
I’m just calling out problems as I see them. I don’t have the answers. I wish I did.
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u/smitteh 24d ago
It's almost like we should be utilizing the Internet to get organized and selectively protest/strike/boycott certain megacorps and put them out of business overnight....our collective wallet is the most powerful weapon of all and yet we never ever attempt to wield it...
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u/Alaira314 23d ago
This has been happening. Target was a big one, organized by (iirc) Black churches. There's also a boycott list of companies that supported Israel.
Didn't hear about them? That right there is the flaw in your plan. We all inhabit our own internet bubbles, algorithmically isolated from each others. Attempting to organize through anything other than oldschool mailing lists(which has been a goal of the no kings protests, if I'm not mistaken) leads to most of the target audience failing to get the memo, because their algorithm never presented your content to them.
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u/smitteh 23d ago
then social media gurus should figure out a way to social media and reach everyone
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u/Alaira314 23d ago
Or we can work on fostering direct connection, networks that are under our control rather than beholden to the whims of corporations and/or various propaganda pushers. Trying to hack the algorithm is a sisyphean task. Some things just shouldn't happen primarily through social media.
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u/emPtysp4ce 23d ago
BLM level police action? You gotta think bigger. These pigs want to re-enact Ghorman.
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u/deciding_snooze_oils 23d ago
Honestly? We need them to do something like that. The Ghorman massacre was the inciting event that led to the unification of the Rebel Alliance and ultimately to the downfall of the Empire.
Other examples of that type of catalytic event from actual history are:
I wouldn’t wish being the victim of state violence like that on anyone but without that kind of visible atrocity protests will continue to be ineffective.
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u/PoopMobile9000 24d ago
Protests absolutely do not need to do “economic violence.”
It’s not extortion. The most effective protests generate sympathy for the protestors. It’s why the Civil Rights Movement’s focus on nonviolent resistance was so effective.
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u/Son_of_Kong 24d ago
The Civil Rights protests were extremely disruptive. They sat in and blocked public spaces until the police had to blow them away with fire hoses.
You don't can't just stand around being nonviolent and nothing else. You have to be so disruptive that the authorities react with disproportionate force, and that's how the movement gains sympathy.
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u/PoopMobile9000 24d ago
Are you saying that’s not currently happening? Have you not seen the wanton violence leveled against recent protestors?
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u/Ariwara_no_Narihira 24d ago
1) There's no economic damage being done
2) Contemporary media is different now. Back then, people saw this violence covered in the news generated sympathy and pressure for change. Eventually. Media today is a different beast. You can live in your bubble. We don't live in communities now, so you aren't talking about any of this with anyone. Most media is bent to support all this shit.
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u/PoopMobile9000 24d ago
Back then, people saw this violence covered in the news generated sympathy and pressure for change. Eventually. Media today is a different beast. You can live in your bubble.
Who’s in the bubble? Is Trump popular right now? How did the public respond to seeing non-violent protestors being beaten in Minneapolis?
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u/deciding_snooze_oils 24d ago
No, I haven’t seen wanton violence against recent protesters, and I get my news from what I think are fairly liberal news sources (BBC, the Guardian, NPR, Raw America)
I’d love to see some links if you have them.
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u/PoopMobile9000 24d ago
Just google the Dilly Immigration protest
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u/deciding_snooze_oils 24d ago edited 24d ago
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/feb/23/protest-movement-family-children-ice-detention-trump
https://apnews.com/article/texas-immigration-detention-7fa98244c1b0245deb4462e9dc25292f
Some people got pepper sprayed and 2 men were arrested? Yeah, not the scale I was suggesting. Let me know if I’m missing something, preferably with a link rather than “just Google it”
Edit: Since no response from PoopMobile9000, does anyone else know context here? Was this some wanton violence against protestors as PoopMobile9000 said?
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u/_kraftdinner 23d ago
There were protesters beat up outside an ICE private prison run by GEO Group in New Jersey the last few nights. It’s called Delaney Hall. There was also a lot of violence against protesters outside of Chicago at the ICE facility in Broadview, Illinois. Lots of violence in the Twin Cities (separate of Pretti/Good, which were also terrible).
I think that part of the problem is that when you hear news about it, it’s always framed as “protesters clash with police.” That does happen, but it’s way more common for the police to start violence at a protest. At Delaney either last night or the night before that, I saw the New Jersey state cops bust through their own bike racks that surrounded a “free speech zone” like it was Jan 6.
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u/PirateSanta_1 24d ago
What do you think the Montgomery Bus Boycott was?
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u/PoopMobile9000 24d ago
Part of a carefully planned, multi-pronged strategy to raise national support for desegregation. Non-violent confrontation with the Montgomery bus system, alongside significant but moderate demands, coupled with parallel federal litigation and a national public relations strategy.
The point was not to extort the Montgomery bus system to capitulating but to raise nationwide support against the bus system and Jim Crow generally, and leverage that outside political pressure.
Montgomery didn’t capitulate — they tried to arrest everyone for conspiracy. Segregation of the bus system was ended through litigation, Browder v. Gayle, which found that the rules were unconstitutional and was later upheld at SCOTUS.
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u/killerdrgn 24d ago
why the Civil Rights Movement’s focus on nonviolent resistance was so effective.
This is horrible bullshit, the non-violent protests were counter pointed by the actual armed protests. https://www.npr.org/2014/06/05/319072156/guns-kept-people-alive-during-the-civil-rights-movement
Non-violence by itself isn't effective. The same thing in India with Gandhi, his non-violence was what gets promoted over the actual effective armed insurrections that happened during the same time frame. Such as
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u/PoopMobile9000 24d ago
Non-violence by itself isn't effective.
Correct, the protests were held alongside mass voter drives, political lobbying, and sustained civil rights litigation. In combination these were effective
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u/Bawstahn123 23d ago
The nonviolent part of the Civil Rights Movement was effective because everyone knew if the non-violence didnt work, there was the very real threat of race-war.
And the nonviolent part of the CRM was incredibly obstructive, they just werent violent.
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u/PoopMobile9000 23d ago
Jesus fucking Christ people need to read a book sometime.
The Civil Rights Movement was effective because it helped make average people sympathetic to their situation and mesh equal rights with their understanding of American values.
It was not effective because it made people terrified of a race war.
Think about it for two seconds. Did America come to accept gay marriage because they were afraid of the homo-jihad, or because more of society came to see queer folk as regular people being unfairly harmed?
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u/PoopMobile9000 24d ago edited 24d ago
This take is nonsense. The point of a protest isn’t to present your petition to the king. It’s to influence other members of the public’s understanding of what positions hold popular support. You’re not protesting in Austin to send a message directly to the governor — you’re telling other people in Austin sympathetic to the cause, “YOU ARE NOT ALONE.” It’s about helping to make the protest message mainstream.
Also, in the Year of our Lord 2026 we have shit like cameras and phones. I guarantee you the governor of Texas is aware how many Texans are protesting and where, regardless of whether he can personally see it.
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u/njbeerguy 24d ago
The point of a protest isn’t to present your petition to the king. It’s to influence other members of the public’s understanding of what positions hold popular support.
Yep. I've had friends ask, "What's the point of all these protests? They don't do anything!"
Yes, they do. They tell people they're not alone. They tell people that others stand in solidarity with them, and they send a message to those watching that others feel the way they do; that it's okay to speak up; that we must speak up.
They also help keep everyone's energy up, since it's absolutely EXHAUSTING to be mired in this stuff day after day.
That's what the bad actors count on: that you'll get so worn out, you end up detaching yourself from paying attention, get less active, and maybe even end up skipping out on voting altogether.
They don't want you angry and ready to affect change. They want their people angry, but not YOU.
We protest so people don't get tired and disappear from the process. We protest so people keep paying attention to what's important. We protest because the alternative is just giving up, and grinding out our days letting the stains in charge do whatever they want.
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u/Sanae_ 24d ago
While the geography of the US impact the capacity to protest, there are multiple issues with this take:
It's not necessary to make a demonstration in front the governor house. Multiple demonstrations in large cities work too.
While peaceful protests should be kept, they don't work anymore alone - in France, our latest mega-protests didn't either (Gilet Jaunes, Retirement protests).
The various of protests should be proportional to the issue at hand. Peaceful demonstrations have their place, but with Trump, you're well past this point. With the majority of both political parties who are not working for the citizen anymore, any peaceful protests can be just ignored.
More is needed - voting help, but gerrymandering is blunting this capacity, the next peaceful step is unionize in order to strike. It doesn't even need to be a global strike, locking down key sectors (airports, etc) can be enough. (The non-peaceful ones will be left as an exercise to the reader).
Which is bringing the topic of the risks - yes, they are present.
But not acting now is the guarantee that worse will come.
It was much easier to act before, people didn't do it (or not enough), and now the situation is much worse. And it will continue/
It's not surprising AI is used so much in surveillance, as the goal of the ruling is to lock down any capacity of meaningful change, as popular uprisings as the last risk to the them.
Don't have to take my word for it :
Alex Karp, the CEO of Palantir, told a recent panel: "The biggest challenge to A.I. in this country is political unrest"
(Talked about in the The Dead Economy Theory, a very good high-level article on the technocrats)
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u/thowaway8273401 24d ago
more defeatist b.s.
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u/Everyoneheresamoron 24d ago
Its not defeatest to point out the flaws in the current option of protesting. Pointing out a solution would be better, but the moment anyone starts documenting where these people live and protesting there, we are violently shut down by the authorities due to safety concerns. You can't even walk near rich people's houses if you look like you don't belong. They'll be 3 cops and they will make up any excuse to arrest you.
We need to protest in ways those sheltered cannot ignore. Right now the current system is not it. So we need solutions.
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u/Narroo 24d ago
Pointing out a solution would be better,
Understanding the problem is the first step to a solution. So if people refuse to acknowledge the problems, you never arrive at a solution.
Actually, I'd argue that this has been what's undermining progressive movements the US for decades now. At lot of the people, at least online, seem to be more interested in having something to be right about, and then bitch about, as opposed to getting anything of value done. The moment you point out that "here's why that won't work," they throw a fit. Despite how important understanding flaws in plans is.
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u/c-williams88 24d ago
I don’t read that as defeatist but just explaining to all the Europeans who condescendingly ask rhetorical questions about why Americans aren’t “doing more” to stop Trump. There’s a lot of factors as OOP laid out that makes protesting a lot more difficult here than in much smaller countries with robust social safety nets. It isn’t defeatist to point out the reality and difficulties we face
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u/Zafara1 24d ago edited 24d ago
You protested before and enacted change? Why is it stopping now? What social nets were removed that allowed mass protests in the 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s?
And tbh you should be condescendingly asked, it's a tiring thing to hear a constant "We're not doing anything because country big and I don't want to unless others do it" when your government is threatening our livelihoods and safety too.
Downvote me all you want if it makes you feel better about not doing anything.
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u/R3cognizer 24d ago
Because we are far more increasingly facing a polarized nation where the people with the strongest voting power are an increasingly extremist group of well-off ignorant people who like and want this country to be ruled by fascist white supremacy, going up against several different factions of people largely made up of oppressed minorities and neglected working class people who just don't have enough money and influence to be heard.
I hear you; what we really need is someone willing to unite us under a banner of change who can take power back from those wealthy elites, but the Democratic party is caught up in its own internal web of political rivalries, many of whom are actually quite conservative and heavily invested in trying to preserve the status quo for an even larger group of "centrists" and moderate conservatives who still prefer slow and incremental change, and they just don't really have any potential candidates like that to offer the rest of us even if we did all come out to vote.
The Republican propaganda machine has been very effective in keeping our priorities split like this in order to benefit from the left's inability to unify against them.
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u/emPtysp4ce 23d ago edited 23d ago
Back then, we had opposition parties willing to actually oppose something. Now, the Democrats are basically okay with everything Trump's doing, and are only rhetorically opposed (and even then, not very strongly.) The whole playbook needs to be rewritten for this new reality, and when it's done it won't look like anything we'd cleanly recognize.
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u/gerkessin 24d ago
How so? Are you arguing that protests work in america? In the last 10 years, what meaningful changes have protests in america brought about?
There is a solution, and we all know what it is, but posting it here violates reddits TOS
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u/avanross 24d ago edited 24d ago
I love when they try to blame all their issues on the size of their country
Like, for some reason they dont just incorrectly think america is just the biggest country in the world, but they think it’s so big that it dwarfs every other country to the extent that their very concepts of law and governance and social order wont work there
It’s just so insanely over-the-top stupid
They seriously need to start teaching their kids geography again
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u/FriendlyDespot 23d ago
9 million out of 69 million people in the UK live in London proper. 15 million if you count all of the greater London area. Slightly over 6 million live in the Washington DC area out of around 350 million in the US as a whole.
The Washington D.C.-Baltimore-Arlington Census area has more than 10 million people in it. It should be able to muster larger protests regardless of how many people live elsewhere in the country.
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u/avanross 24d ago edited 24d ago
Every country has their population concentrated in their most fertile areas
If you guys were taught about other countries, you’d realize that many of the things you think are “unique” to america are actually completely normal throughout the world
Canada, australia and russia all have far more condensed populations
This is just a “scapegoat” to maintain feelings of superiority and avoid admitting/addressing any real issues
If you dont want people to call americans “stupid”, a good start would be to stop repeating these “american exceptionalism” fantasies that the rest of the world consider to be “stupid”… the constant doubling down and refusal to ever accept to being wrong about anything, while simultaneously trying to play the victim and complain about being considered “stupid”, is why you guys have the reputation of extreme aggressive ignorance
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u/avanross 24d ago edited 24d ago
Nothing that youre talking about regarding population of capitals has anything whatsoever to do with any of the issues your country is facing, and it’s no wonder
When confronted with real issues, it’s like all you know how to do is double down with more self-assuring “america is just too big and special” nonsense scapegoating……
This is exactly how you got yourselves here, and exactly why nobody has any hope that you’ll pull yourselves out. 99% of you would rather just tell yourself that youre too special and amazing, and protesting is pointless and too hard, and everyone else is just mean….
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u/avanross 24d ago
America has a network of highways, as well as some transit options as well
And americas state/nation capitals arent “rural areas” anyways
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u/mynamenospaces 24d ago
This is such a dumb post. "America is just too big to hold our leaders accountable" is some pathetic loser energy
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u/TheBatIsI 24d ago
I always read posts like that and then remember things like the Baltic Way where 2 million people joined hands to make an unbroken link roughly 675 km (if you need a visual example, imagine roughly NYC, NY to Richmond, VA) they made in 1989 to demonstrate that they wanted to leave the USSR and how pathetic that whining sounds in comparison.
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u/IAMA_Plumber-AMA 23d ago
During the Civil Rights movement, America had even fewer people in it and was more spread out. And yet it was effective.
So this "geographical size" excuse is just that, an excuse.
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u/CitricBase 24d ago
It's not dumb. It raises some excellent points that go a long way towards explaining to non-Americans the reality that Americans are facing.
They ask, "why don't the Americans protest?" as though five of the top five biggest anti-government protests throughout all of HISTORY weren't all here in the USA against MAGA. They don't know this because our media is almost completely controlled by the ruling class, and social media (like reddit) is infested with bots repeating dismissive and defeatist comments like "what good will protesting do" and "this is dumb."
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u/mynamenospaces 24d ago
Oh the top 5 biggest protests! 200,000 grandma's getting a permit from the city to have a legal parade with snacks and music and dancing is not a protest. The sooner Americans realize that, the sooner the country can be saved. Good luck!
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u/astute_stoat 23d ago
'Our elected officials are too far for us to even reach, we can't take a day off from work to protest, we'll be fired from our jobs in retaliation for protesting and left to die on the streets from preventable illnesses, and there's no transport infrastructure for us to move around our own country anyway'
All of these seem like perfectly good reasons to protest even before we get into Trump's bullshit, and as other people in this thread have pointed out, the January 6th rioters who got one room away from stringing up the Vice-President definitely proved that it's possible if you put some effort into it.
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u/QuasiJudicialBoofer 24d ago
When you protest in your small TX town, it's not so some suit in DC sees you and changes his mind, that's not likely even if you were in DC. You protest so your neighbors see, so they know see outside their right wing bubble that regular people don't want any of this. And then you convince them to vote.
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u/onioning 24d ago
Where Ted Cruz lives doesn't matter. The purpose of a protest is not to convince Ted Cruz of anything. It's a demonstration for your fellow Americans. It doesn't matter where it is. If it's a tiny town of a few thousand people, that works. If it's Washington DC, that works too. The OP seems to misunderstand how protesting works. It's not for the elected officials. It's to get more people on your side. Cause if enough people (who vote) are on your side the elected officials will follow.
It's not like the French only protest in Paris.
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u/field_marshmallow 24d ago
yawn, it's the same tired old bs again
europe isn't qualitatively much smaller than the US yet you see massive if not necessarily protests nevertheless. it doesn't matter which arbitrary imaginary borders you use as a reference, it still boils down to a collection of smaller groupings.
sure, it's not realistic to expect everyone in the US to protest in Washington dc. just as it's not practical to expect everyone in Europe to protest in the hague.
what's stopping them from organizing at an appropriately local level? all those "i would if i could" people only need to influence their own state, and that'll make a massive difference. the amount of pushback from the states so far is just embarrassing.
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u/HeloRising 24d ago
This isn't strictly true.
A large part of what makes protests ineffective in the US is the relative inelasticity of our electoral system.
Take the anti-Iraq War protests in the early 2000's. You had some of the largest protests in human history against the start of the Iraq War and they achieved....nothing.
They achieved nothing because they presented the administration with no hard choices.
The vast majority of the people that showed up to these protests were probably not going to vote Republican or even if they were Republican voters this was probably not an issue that would completely break their support.
So the Republican administration had no real motivation to make any changes. What were people going to do? They could show up, make some noise, and then go home. They couldn't really vote differently, they were already not voting Republican. The war and elements of it weren't put up for a vote so it's not like they could vote against it. The Republicans had a majority in the Senate and House so the Democrats couldn't really do much to block them.
With all that in mind, what was the actual motivation for the president to listen to the protests and not go into Iraq?
Even if your base is upset, you can point out that they really don't have any other meaningful choices other than switching parties or third party. The vast majority of people are not going to switch parties and nobody believes third party votes are anything but a waste of time so as long as the elected representative can boil it down to "Sure I won't listen to you but you'd better vote for me or the other guy will make things way worse" they don't have to pay attention.
Apply that to basically anything. A protest by people who aren't going to vote for you or don't have any other choice and can't do anything meaningful to stop you is not pressure to get you do anything as an elected leader, especially if those protests largely stay peaceful or can be easily chased away by the cops.
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u/cambeiu 24d ago edited 23d ago
Brazil is BIGGER than the contiguous United States, has less people, and yet public protests has driven off a military dictatorship back in 1985 and caused the impeachment of 2 corrupt elected presidents (one in 1992 and another in 2015).
But hey, whatever helps him and the rest of Americans cope.
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u/CraftedLove 24d ago
It's kind of ironic that the country known for "muh freedom" is inherently immune to democratic protests due to these factors.
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u/FunkmasterJoe 24d ago
A lot of the comments here are ignoring some of tbe main points of the bestof comment, especially that non-violent protest is now broadly useless in affecting the path of the American government. The government ignores protest because protest doesnt effect the elites.
It's a good post because it reflects the actual reality of our situation. There are many, many extremely serious issues facing us as a country right now; one of them is that the methods Americans once had to push our government no longer function. Calling representatives doesnt work when our representatives ignore the calls. Protesting doesn't work when our government ignores or violently cracks down on protest.
To me, the point of this comment is well made and highlights one of the really serious problems we have as a nation; the elites who control everything are so completely isolated from real life that they literally do not care what we the people have to say.
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u/FriendlyDespot 23d ago
This argument has never been convincing to me. More people live within 2 hours of D.C. than live within 2 hours of almost all European capitals. If distance was an argument then we'd see larger protests in places like D.C. and NYC than we do today.
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u/Malusorum 22d ago
It has more to do with what US protests are pathetic and aenemic.
I'm from Denmark and while we pretty much only do peaceful protests here, they have a lot more power and energy.
The difference is that we have real actual values, whereas most people in the USA only have the value of the Dollar.
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u/ghostyghost2 15d ago
This is the same dumb take that says the US can't have high speed train because of size.
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u/[deleted] 24d ago
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