Unmute this meme immediately!
Yeah… Like, I agree a lot of the liberal “resistance” is useless but also every time I see a leftist online advocating for revolution, I’m wondering when they’re gonna kick it off.
It ain’t gonna happen until a critical mass of the population has nothing left to lose. As it stands now, revolution sounds great to me, but getting arrested or killed leaves my family impoverished and possibly homeless. Being a cog in the machine is a preferable fate
Civil-War/Rebellions/Revolution’s are massively deadly and don’t frequently resolve in the revolutionaries favor. Sometimes someone worse comes along to fill the vacuum, sometimes the state just gets to justify clamping down harder if it wins.
Dude… why you gotta call me out like that? I was perfectly content being an online slacktivist, griping about shit I’m not actually going to do anything about and now you’ve ruined it 😠
People who are actively working for change in concrete ways don’t often call attention to themselves by posting about it on public social media. If nobody in power is working to silence you, you’re probably participating in controlled opposition and not much else.
How incredibly convenient. Or paranoid.
No, I’m not, because I’m not an American and it isn’t our fucking job to fix the thing the rest of us have been telling you for decades was going to happen.
Well… You’re not wrong.
But it’s not helpful to doom about these things.
I dunno, acknowledging the problems seems like a good start
Lemmy has been chock-full of these memes critical of the dems since the election. How much more of this “good start” is needed before people move on to the next step (whatever it might be)?
Everyone I know is already aware of the fact that we’re bracing through a torrent of garbage. I’m terrified that reluctant voters are going to choose the party that will turn the pressure higher or ignore the flesh stripping blast. My skin has peeled to the bone. Throwing suspicion at the only people capable of closing the valve is not relevant to me.
If they’re capable of closing the valve, why haven’t they? They either complain they don’t have the votes to make a difference; or when they do have the votes, they say “this is the time to compromise” or whatever lame excuse to continue to do nothing.
A prerequisite to getting into a position where one is “capable of closing the valve” is to prove, beyond any doubt, that they are not a person who could ever dream of closing that valve. Even a little bit.
You are being one of those “ignore the flesh stripping blast” as you tell others that “throwing suspicion” is “not relevant”. Motherfucker we’ve been throwing a lot more than just suspicion at them for 50+ years and they won’t do shit. I’m glad you’ve got enough bodies between you and that nozzle so that the level of inaction is irrelevant to you, but that’s not true for your shields.
Dude, we’re a decent proportion of the way into the transition to fascism. Your absence of situational awareness and reading comprehension is going to sway people toward cranking up the pressure. Again.
In what world does my saying that my flesh has been stripped to the bone indicate that I haven’t been affected? Read between the lines, ya doofus
You’re right. Everything’s ok.
/s
Dude, the US is on fire. Pointing out that there’s a sewage leak is unhelpful.
If you look at a forest fire, you can’t do anything, so the thing is to weather it out/ contain it and try to prevent it happening. Looking at a trash can fire, you try to put it out before it gets out of hand.
I agree with that sentiment too.
But they are. Think what the message is implying here. Don’t do the things that are actually important to actually pull votes to your side. There’s no point since it’s all rigged. This post is propaganda.
This post is like some political consultant group found things that could sway an election and turn tides and then inverted it to imply those things are just silly
This post is propaganda.
So is this reply. Also being propaganda is funny in this case since nothing here says anything about not voting, just that currently the two party system has broken down and no longer feels like democracy (due to how it is not). In this case who would the propaganda be for? The democrats? Not likely, they are not helped here. The republicans? Don’t think they care, many don’t plan on having fair elections again. Big molotov?
This helps Republicans. You’re not going to see that. But that’s why the left is in the situation they are in. You’re all still in the stone age that you’re not relevant anymore. It’s not that the Democrats are shit. The entire left are so far behind that they won’t catch up anytime soon
Not a democrat, not even an american.
The us is no longer a democracy, and is fast becoming the next global pariah state.
It’s still a democracy. There is still a lot of order and authority keeping things running. It’s just a shit show right now. But places like Lemmy and other social media radicalizing people are trying to undo it
That’s not what a democracy is. North Korea has a lot of order and authority keeping things running as well for example.
Every form of government requires that.
Sorry to break it to you but the blame lies with the American people. In Europe, when something like this happens, everyone’s on the streets and there are strikes everywhere. And the protests almost always turn violent. And we’re talking about large demonstrations of millions, not a few hundred/thousands as in the US. In the US, the demonstrations kinda feel like a spectacle, a show that you join for a couple of hours. In Europe it means business. I’m also American, but I’m currently in Greece. I’ve seen the differences with my own eyes. The public needs to show force, or it has no teeth. I’m not advocating for violence, I’m advocating for teeth.
Unfortunately even Europe is going this way. The right have figured out how to spam nonsense on social media and turn enough people. And how to control media in general, just be on tv and radio as much as possible complaining about everything even if it doesn’t exist and offer up baseless solutions to solve every problem you’ve ever head.
See Farage.
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I think one of the big concerns is that Trump is looking for any excuse to deploy the military against our own citizens. If he can start something violent in the streets, it justifies declaring martial law and taking over Democrat-run states. But in this digital age, everyone has cameras on their phones, so he needs the citizens to start shit first. He’s not brave enough yet to directly contradict video evidence of crimes (although he’s getting there).
That’s one of the big reasons Americans are trying to keep their protests civil. If we turn it violent, Trump gets his way and we get don’t stand a chance against a military invasion on our own land. Like in California, when Trump sent the National Guard to quell protests against ICE in LA, nothing came of it because no one wanted to start a fight. Protestors showed up, but none of them directly engaged with the military. Eventually the whole military campaign fizzled and the National Guard was recalled home.
We’re dealing with that again in Washington D.C. right now. Trump created some fake crime emergency to deploy the National Guard in D.C., despite an all-time low crime rate right now. Protestors are showing up in force, but nothing’s happening because they’re not directly confronting the National Guard. Just standing their ground and peacefully protesting.
I’m all for revolution; I think the only way we’ll fix our broken system is to tear it all down and rebuild from scratch; there are too many corrupt officials, on both sides of the fence, to repair it as is. And too many corrupt laws and regulations in place to function effectively. But you can’t just go in with violence. It’s a delicate situation right now and violence should be the absolute last resort. Trump has no problem sending millions to their deaths for his ideals and he’ll gladly invade our own nation to cement his dictatorship. We can’t give him the excuse to do it.
I was serving in the US military when Trump got elected the first time, and that was a scary time for us. He spoke very favorably about various dictators and wanting to reshape America like their countries. But he had a majority Democrat government that kept slapping down every BS thing he tried, so his first term was mostly uneventful.
This time around, though, he has a majority Republican government and enough supporters in high level positions that he’s surrounded by yes men. He’s been a lot more bold. I’m really glad I retired when I did because there’s no way I could follow his unlawful orders.
I think that’s the biggest difference between the US and Europe. Europe isn’t going to deploy the military to break up violent protests and then use it to enact martial law and overthrow that nation. Trump will, if given the chance.
Sure, we don’t have to start with violence, but the person you responded to also said strike. A general strike would topple what’s left of the rotting economy Trump created and angering the corporate overlords is really the only hope in a corporate oligarchy.
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You’re right, but two things can be true at the same time: Europe is slipping to the right, but it still has a lot more civil engagement.
But as long as neoliberalism is maintained while it withers, the course here will be the same as the US: Fascism.
The final count for No Kings was over 5 million. Glad a bunch of folks that only work 30 hours a week can be at their commin protest point within hours and complain that Americans barely keeping their heads above water have low numbers just because our country is massive.
5 million is nothing in country of 300+ million. In Greece, last February, 4 million people hit the streets, in a country of 10 million.
It would have taken me 5 hours to get to my state capitol where I am from, and even if half the state came, as huge as it is, that would still be only 2.5 million in a place that is barely on the map. We would have to shut down the entire state for a day just so people could take off work for the travel alone. Thos country is HUGE! I would like to protest chicago, but it would take at least 6 hours for me to get there from my location. Washington DC is about 14.5 hours away. And I am just talking one-way. There is lots of empty space here, with wildly different cultures on each side of those spaces. Greece is like the size of Alabama, but if you protested in Alabama, you are protesting in cities that do not get a lot of attention. I would bet you can not name one city there. Want to know why? Because nobody cares.
Shit is hitting the fan this week in Chicago. We have protested and protested and protested. That 50501 number was just for the No Kings protest. Of course the news never makes it to all of you. You might all get to see the civil war you wanted so badly. But we’ll lose. This wil be a slaughter if it pops off.
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Look at my other comment. Greece is a country of less than 10million and 4 million hit the streets in feb. For No Kings protest in the US, only 5 million hit the streets. Out of 300 million ppl. That’s the comparison I’m making.
I’m also American, but I’m currently in Greece.
Oh yeah that definitely makes you a credible voice for “europe”.
I am from the Netherlands, born and raised, and let me just say: the amount of civil resistance against Trump’s regime is shocking to me and my Dutch peers.
NGL memes like this just read like Doomer Cope and Fascist propaganda.
Oh, that’s because that’s exactly what it is
“Resistance theater” is a great term.
It’s also a term describing the protest non-voters.
“I’m not owned, you’re owned!” as the poster turned into a corn cob
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But sure, go ahead and keep sharing memes on Lemmy about how bad orange man is
It’s not an orange man bad meme. It’s a liberals ain’t doing nothing meme, which is actually a true and valid problem. We have to find ways to sabot the gears of the autocratic oppression machine. As Helen Cox Richardson notes, if you got an artistic bone in your body, get to artting!
Also Knitting Cult Lady did a video ( on YouTube ) about how Orange Man’s orange makeup is the same thing as Queen Elizabeth I’s make-up (white leaded paint, which, yes, did poison her) to signal that she is a living god. In the queen’s case it was a means to get England to recognize a woman as a legit ruler (rather than pressuring her to find a husband to take over).
Orange Man does it because he wants to be a cult leader (which is essentially the same thing), and we don’t find his facepaint absurd enough to throw him from his podium or think of him as a clown.
This is how we know human beings are the evolutionary equivalent of a lowest-common-bidder project, the minimum amount of reasoning necessary to build a rocket and touch the moon. Otherwise, we are still brutal animals, and apes as silly as the ones in the jungle.
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Everything you claim should be done is what Bernie Sanders supported and that got us nowhere.
It’s really easy to get up on your high horse and claim that leftist identity politics is the problem instead of looking at the systemic failures of American democracy. Lobbying, Gerrymandering, media outlet control, anti-intellectual propaganda, voter disenfranchisement, an underfunded education system, the electoral college, a packed supreme court, etc.
This isn’t a case of ‘if you can stop being righteous and just hate gay people for a moment we could have had universal health care.’ This is a case of the democratic process unravelling in its end stages as the popular candidate lost the vote four times in the seven presidential elections.
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That’s a little hypocritical of you to call this “widespread, infectious binary thinking” when I was pointing this out in your comment, not advocating for it.
You’re faulting liberals for stifling class warfare through engaging in identity politics, when you said so yourself that it doesn’t have to be either or.
Identity politics isn’t the enemy of class warfare, it’s corporate interests, lobbying, and billionaires, and they want you to do exactly what you are doing now, which is to get liberals to gatekeep each other while they laugh at low tax rates.
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Everything you claim should be done is what Bernie Sanders supported and that got us nowhere.
Imagine if Bernie just gave up the first time he lost an election, he would have bowed out in 1972 when he only got 2.1% of the vote in a Vermont Senate special election.
Instead he’s been bang on consistent with his views for going on 60 goddamn years now. The rest of the left could learn a lot from that.
Never forget that thousands lined up to vote for Bernie during covid, putting their health at risk and he ultimately… dropped out.
Real leadership quality there. I’m sure his candidacy would have been enough to stop the fascists.
Joe Biden.
It was always going to happen. The universe is Entropic, and this is how that manifests. There is no escaping decay, our fathers had a good run.
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Is this like a political compass kind of thing?
Kind of, it shows that there are a few ways to try to achieve change. So if you keep trying one of those methods and don’t see the change you want, it might be time to change tactics.
The political axes of moderate–militant and liberal–radical may seem equivalent, but they are not. It’s true that liberals are often moderates, and radicals are often militants. But that’s not inevitable and it’s not universal. I’ve worked with plenty of radicals who were also moderates, who sought to make fundamental changes in the power dynamics of their communities using low-risk action to make gradual changes. And I’ve worked with liberal militants, who were willing to fight to make changes within established power structures. In any case, all of these approaches can have a time and place in resistance struggles.
soo radical militant?
Those damned radical moderates!
If I’m only judged by what I do and say, I might be exactly that.
I don’t like it.
I quite like this bur the layout is terrible. Why not just make the perspective normal so its readable?
Its a screenshot from the eBook but yeah I agree about the perspective
The only real resolution is the one people don’t want to admit to publicly. They can’t even write the words out and publish it. It’s not even a game of chicken. Nobody lives forever. History has seen the correct treatment to what he is in the past. It should be done now as well.
I’ve got a solution, get rid of Facebook and Fox News in your Maga people’s lives. Put parental controls on their TVs if you can and try to convince them that Fox News was bought out or something. It’s the constant deluge of bullshit that’s causing this.
MAX FISHER: The places where Facebook usage - not general internet usage, but specifically Facebook usage - was significantly above the average for Germany, the number of attacks on refugees was also well above the average.
SHAPIRO: That’s author Max Fisher, who writes about this research in his new book, “The Chaos Machine.” It’s not just that violence against refugees went up in places where people used Facebook a lot. The researchers also looked at outages - Facebook disruptions - and they found that when the platform went offline in a specific place, attacks against refugees in that community dropped.
FISHER: Extended time on social media is addictive, and it changes your behavior, and it changes the way that your mind works. And it does that in a consistent direction towards more outrage, more extreme ideas and a greater hatred of us versus them.
You could wipe every reactionary television station, radio station, magazine, social media, and newspaper off the face of the earth, but capitalism’s internal contradictions would make their resurgence inevitable.
So long as wages are suppressed, social safety nets withered, wealth inequality balloons, education decays, retirement age grows, and healthcare becomes unattainable, the backside into fascism is inevitable.
How do you think fascism took hold in Germany, and how was it mitigated?
Your analysis falls into the same trap as other liberal analysis - that our means of changing our politics is a function of “changing people’s minds” in “the marketplace of ideas”. Liberal analysis champions the notion that “ideas” are what turn the wheels of history. In reality, it was Soviet T34s blasting Nazis into mist that mitigated German fascism - not some completely unachievable and unpragmatic scheme to break into retirement homes across the country and put parental controls on grandpa’s favorite flavor of right wing pundit TV.
Just remember to always vote for the least worst, because there is no good, so that’s the best you can do. And fascists are always the worst, by a mile.
Me in my 20s: “NO EFF YOU! NO COMPROMISE!”
Me, tired, in my 30s: “1 vote for Kodos, please”
80% of Democrat voters: “yeah I know they’re owned by corporate interests and won’t actually make good on any of their promises, but if I don’t vote for them the Republicans will get in”
80% of Republican voters: “yeah I know the GOP is mostly about making themselves rich, but I hate Democrats more than I like the Republican Party”
Votescolds: don’t you dare think of trying to upset this perfect beautiful balance that will play out every election for the next thousand years. In fact if you even suggest it you’re probably a Russian psyop
That’s just false though since Biden did do a lot of shit that he promised he would.
They both suck, but it’s not even close to the same.
Why lie?
fits the narrative that all politicians are bad and that no one should vote, even if it’s the most powerful force of change that ordinary people have at their disposal
Except there are chunks of Democrats whonare not corporate stooges who might eventually make things better.
Literally all of the Republicans are MAGA Nazis.
Even your descriptions of how samey the voters are reveals a huge difference though. The nature of each “side” came through in your choice of words.
The first paragraph is essentially holding your nose and voting for the lesser evil in order to oppose the party that openly wants to harm people all around you.
The second paragraph is essentially holding your nose and voting for the lesser evil in order to oppose the party that you happen to hate.
The discussion almost feels moot at this point though, because SO much of the american populace has jumped at the chance to support the greater evil over and over.
So I guess the stance I’m taking is kind of a “¿Por Qué No Los Dos?”
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The system is horribly broken from down in the details of the voting system all the way to the hyper-capitalist type-A rat race culture that is incompatible with sustained human happiness. It needs to be replaced to “fix” things.
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As long as we have our same busted culture and constitution in place, then if there continue to be regular elections that seem consistent with past ones, and no shady motherfuckers are trying to link identities to ballots, then I am probably still going to go out and vote for the lesser evil.
Granted, we might already be past the point of no return where that vote won’t count or the election won’t happen. That’s why it’s a conditional statement.
Capitalism and greed are not what make us our best selves. But you had better believe I voted for “maybe we should at least catch up to Europe with regulating capitalism and protecting the people” instead of “fuck everything and fuck all y’all! Let’s try turning the world superpower into a death cult for a generation or two!”
The Harris administration is not where I REALLY want my country to be right now. Not if you’re going to give me the magic to actually fix things. But given the fork in the road between whatever Harris was bringing us and (gestures in all directions), I don’t see myself changing my mind.
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Ooh, anti-democracy propaganda started early this cycle. I guess cons aren’t so sure about this one so they had to start this voting supression psyop this time of the year.
I’ll vote blue out of harm reduction, not out of hope.
IF there’s another real election, and IF the Neoliberals win, they’ll do NOTHING to reign in the capitalists that fund the fascists because they’re bribed to protect the “free market,” just as the Fascists are.
All them winning in 2028 might do is buy a little time before the Fascists are on the march the following cycle. That’s why it’s ignorant when people claim the only reason we’re collapsing is Trump. Reagan set the table for fascism and every president since has furthered that outcome. Whether this happened in 2020,2024, 2028, this was happening.
So vote for the Neoliberals all you want. I do it out of the starfish parable, to one delayed fascist action, it matters, but we’re still in a capitalist fascist hell, and until we have something to vote or riot for that will bring the capital markets to cinder, nothing can improve. You should feel like throwing up after voting here.
When you vote neoliberal democratic party, nothing fundamentally changes, and shit system isn’t fixed. When you don’t, armed vans are roaming around the cities putting non-white people in concentration camps somewhere abroad.
You can boast your moral superiority all you want, but those are the choices, and every person with a sliver of morality should spend all their waking second to prevent one of those choices to happen again, more.
The “everyone is the same, voting is pointless, if you vote you are a sheep that doesn’t see the moral truth” posts are doing the opposite of that, and when the opposite is encluraged, you get the worse choice, the one that hates you and actively working on killing you.There’s also not-insignificant evidence coming to light suggesting out voting is already compromised. Several counties have ridiculously anomalous voting patterns based on their investigation. Congress is already borked, and the Senate never seems to make a good decision, and the supreme Court is bought and paid for. I’m going to vote for the lesser of two evils because doing anything else is pointless, and also maybe is that vote. I highly doubt the people are going to be allowed to continue their voting fraud investigation, or make anything happen to those responsible even if the evidence becomes insurmountable.
I’m personally afraid that there’s no coming back. Trump (take 2) is the result of a broken system, not the cause. But I’ll continue doing my part in hopes that I’m wrong. I can’t afford to expatriate.
You heard it here first folks: this guy says don’t vote its not worth it it doesnt matter anyway they dont count it they’ll cheat anyway
I feel like I remember saying the exact opposite actually… Hold on, let me check.
I’m going to vote for the lesser of two evils because doing anything else is pointless,
But I’ll continue doing my part in hopes that I’m wrong.
Yep turns out I did. Yes, I absolutely have concerns that it won’t make a difference, but I’m not delusional enough to think doing absolutely nothing is a viable option. I think there’s a chance we can recover, but I’m also afraid we might not.
I want the two party system to die, but right now our only option is to try and vote in true progressives until they remove the parts of the system that keep the status quo. Yes, I said vote them in, because I think it’s still the best current option. It’s slow, and it sucks, and there will still be a ton more damage done before anything (hopefully) changes for the better, but I’m not giving up. Just expressing my fears and thoughts. Iowa’s recent election shows that voting still works, at the very least, in the smaller elections.
To reiterate: I, and everyone capable of doing so, should still vote. Who knows, maybe we can get enough independent Congress seats filled to eventually have an actual say in what happens.
But you can understand my frustrations right? These people are breaking the law, refusing to follow scotus rulings, committing war crimes, and a great deal of people are cheering for it, and not a single consequence is being dished out to those who deserve it. The rule of law has never to my knowledge been so flagrantly ignored in American history.
I’ll continue to participate in democracy, but I won’t truly believe it’s working until crimes and behavior is answered for, and those currently in power are properly held to account.
Americans have so thoroughly bought into the notion that democracy means an entrenched two-party system, that they instinctively view any suggestion to the contrary as “anti-democracy”.
Virtually every other functioning democracy in the world manages to maintain legislative houses with anything from 6-20 parties represented in Government, but somehow you’ve created a self-fulfilling prophecy where it’s impossible for you to have because it’s impossible for you to have.
It’s cool in theory. In practice, US is a two-party system, and a regular person can’t do shit about it. So you either vote for least bad party and organise and campaign to improve something, or you vote for most bad party and spend the whole time trying to survive while the most bad party kills most vulnerable people.
It’s a shit system, US is deeply fucked. However, you don’t go about fixing it by not understanding how it worksa regular person can’t do shit about it
Regular people can do everything about it. It just needs for people to stop telling them they can’t.
Eat poo no matter who!
Tankies love to post these memes about how it’s hopeless to resist fascism and there’s nothing we can do, but what they like to forget is that we leftists have the option of rising against the state, not just by voting, but also by organising for general strikes, civil disobedience, and armed revolution.
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“Me” is also one of the “grey NPCs” sooo
Check again
