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.

But it’s not helpful to doom about these things.

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

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.

I’m not advocating for violence, I’m advocating for teeth.

The status quo is more violent than a riot or political assassination could ever measure up to. I advocate for killing it by whatever means are available. If violence is a plausible tool, use violence. If voting still has any hope of accomplishing anything, do that. Our stupidity and apathy have created a monster that must die.

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.

In Europe, when something like this happens, everyone’s on the streets and there are strikes everywhere.

This is not true, most major European countries have a growing Trump like movement and they’re steadily gaining ground. Consider France, the country most notorious for its protests, the left there does like the Americans – keep voting for their version of the Democrats only to get burned over and over in Parliament. In many spaces, European countries do not have as good protection for individual liberties and even social democratic governments are fine with doing things that are sometimes on par with the Trump regime (albeit not being as gauche, lawless and explicitly cruel about it). For instance, the EU is trying to mandate that pretty much all digital communication is put under AI based surveillance (under the guise of tracking down pedos) – the movement against this is very fringe even though it affects everyone. You should also keep in mind that European leaders, all over the spectrum, are blindly caving to Trump whenever he exerts any form of pressure.

In summary, many of us in Europe are better off in terms of not yet living under a creeping autocracy that has become void of any credible democratic influence for the populace. But it’s slipping here too, heading in the same direction, and by and large the general public is not really paying attention.

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.

Oh, that's because that's exactly what it is

It's also a term describing the protest non-voters.

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.

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.

Is this like a political compass kind of thing?

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.

Me in my 20s: "NO EFF YOU! NO COMPROMISE!"

Me, tired, in my 30s: "1 vote for Kodos, please"

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.

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.