The Untied States should have their independence revoked
Well yeah. It takes violence to stop violence, and we’ve been brain washed in schools with the “Zero Tolerance Policy” that retaliating is worse than being a bully. Kids who defended themselves from aggressors often were either the only ones punished, or punished far worse than the instigator. That’s been going on for at least 2-3 decades in said schools. It has obviously made a bunch of adults too afraid of doing the right thing.
It’s why we hold parades instead of protests with the threat of escalation. If we really wanted to make changes, Republicans and their minions(ICE) would not have homes to live in, or comfortable lives. Same for their enablers.
We would have taken them off the board and held special elections as populace. Still can, and will still need to when we have finally had enough. That or a foreign power will do it for us, but then they get to make the rules instead of “We The People”.
You’re very much on the right track, but I think it goes much much deeper than violence. It goes to self-reliance.
Go back to the time of the Framers. If you wanted something to happen, literally anything at all, you had to do it yourself. Criminal stealing your shit? By the time you get to town to ask for help he’ll be gone, so either say goodbye to your shit (and maybe your wife too) or grab your rifle and confront him. Government not doing what you want? Grab your pitchfork and head to City Hall, or run for office yourself. Feeling hungry? Better start cooking. Want to have meat this winter? Better start raising a cow today. Bully picking on you? Better learn to fight his ass. Your house is broken? Better grab a hammer and a saw because nobody else’s gonna help fix it.
Over the last 100ish years, that attitude has been slowly changing. Individual self-reliance has given way to a sort of mutualist service society where self-reliance is no longer the norm, it’s no longer the exception, it’s become almost an outlier.
Criminal stealing your shit? Call the police and hide until they arrive. Government not doing what you want? Write a letter or whine about it online. Feeling hungry? Grab your phone because food’s an Uber Eats order away. Your house is broken? Call a repairman or a carpenter.
What’s missing there? Any kind of self-reliance, self-empowerment to solve your own problems. Every problem involves asking or paying someone else to fix it for you.
I argue that the result of this is a society of people who’ve forgotten that they DO have the power to solve their own problems.I don’t blame malice for this, I blame a combination of laziness along with a LOT of well-meaning people and policies that only further disenfranchise the populace from their own agency, usually in the name of safety. You mention zero tolerance for bullying, that’s certainly one as it teaches the victim not to fight back. Police say the same thing though- police always say if confronted with a threat just give the criminal what they want and run away when you can.
There’s pockets of resistance to this sort of attitude, but they are largely isolated and focused on their own agendas without real connection. The most obvious might be gun owners and the concealed carry movement. But there’s plenty of others- the open source community, the right to repair movement, the maker community, the free range parenting movement, and just about any other DIY community. They’re all focused on their own individual niche, but the attitude is the same-- you CAN do ____ yourself, you DON’T need someone else to do it for you.
We need more of that. And I think it starts with school curriculum. If I was in charge, I’d take one academic semester out of high school (or at least a few credit hours) and devote it to purely empowering and constructive practical lessons. Wood shop, auto repair, plumbing/electrical, coding, cooking, industrial design, financial planning, etc. I don’t think this should be optional electives to bypass, I believe these lessons are just as important as reading writing and maths, because if we create kids that are book smart but life stupid, we’re doing them a disservice. And that’s what we’re doing now.
For our society to find our way out of this, we (the population) need to empower ourselves, recognize that we are NOT helpless, and take back agency over our lives.
Unfortunately I think that won’t happen until either a. a real leader comes along who can energize people- think Obama before his first term, but with actual balls to FIGHT rather than watering everything down. Bernie could have been that. But I think we need another MLK type person. Or b, things get a good bit worse, for the population to stop desperately trying to stay afloat in a rigged game and instead doing a table-flip rejection of the rigged system.
Au contraire, a truly “mutualist” society would never fall for the bullshit that is happening.
If everyone had trust and a good working relationship with their neighbors and solidarity with their working class comrades, the US capitalist class and therefore the government in its current form would quickly cease to exist.
The problem is specifically that the US capitalists inserted themselves as unavoidable middlemen into every aspect of US life. Notice how you’re not getting food from your community kitchen, you’re getting food from Uber Eats. You’re not usually calling a repairman from your local community, you’re calling a company that sends one out to you. You’re not getting help from your community militia, you’re getting it from an armed wing of the bourgeois government.
(ironically, this was possible to do through years or “rugged individualism” propaganda, that you are repeating here; other things like car dependency also made things worse)
This lack of local community is a big part of why there is so little organized protest. It’s very difficult to rile up your neighbors to take up arms and meaningfully protest when you barely even know them. This would apply even more in your imagined scenario of everyone becoming individualists who raise their own cows - people wouldn’t even have time to protest because they would spend all of it on their own survival, and those who stick their head up are easily arrested and thrown into jail, with noone to protect them.
I don’t understand why people are acting like half the country didn’t want him. Present them with any other option and they will still choose him even today.
Edit: To those who keep discussing how people didn’t vote, please realize that is still a choice. If you didn’t vote then you may as well have voted for him regardless.
Im still trying to figure out how people like you think half the population voted for him. He won a plurality, which means more than his opponent. A majority is over 50%.
Only <65% people of voting age even voted (including 3rd party candidates). He didnt even win a majority amongst only those who voted. And who of the remaining 35%+ is fascist or anti-fascist? They’re pretty vocal, now.
Any other option lmao. Dude, he’s the least popular president in history. What are you huffing?
Regardless of supporting someone who attempted to overthrow our government, he is surrounded by convicted rapists and pedophiles. Why would he do that?
Regardless of his fascination with dictators and his love of rapists and pedophiles, his Iran war BS is being used explicitly for stock market manipulation. Presidents are not allowed to manipulate the stock market for profit. They actually have some pretty specific rules about what kind of money they can gain, use, and their possession of property is typically very scrutinized for a variety of reasons.
A rapist and pedophile loving, dictator admiring, stock market manipulating, genocide supporting and threatening, wonderful president.
Let me ask: Who won in 2020?
because 2/3 of voters did not vote against him, therefore they are either okay with it or were unable to vote
my assumption is that the size of the latter group, while significant, is not 15% of voters
By that token, more people didnt vote for Trump. That means he lost because 2/3 of people didnt vote for him.
not really how popular votes work
Exactly my point. Thank you for agreeing that your argument was silly.
I see what you’re trying to do, and you’re failing. it’s not the same logic.
It literally is. Your argument is that people who didnt vote for Trump wanted him to be president. All people who didnt vote for Kamala are somehow pro-Trump. If that wasn’t your intent, you need to work on how you phrase things.
All I did was say precisely what you said lol just the other way around. Thats because people who didnt vote… did not vote! Ascribing a desired candidate to people who didnt participate is … not how it works!
Everyone that doesnt go to subway hates subs so they absolutely must like burgers! See? Silly.
A lot of people felt disenfranchised and abstained due to a sense of moral superiority to be sure. That doesn’t mean they voted for Trump or felt like Trump was the superior candidate. People who dont pay attention to politics didnt vote for or against either candidate, people who didnt vote also didnt vote for or against either candidate.
Yup, this presidency has killed my faith in our supposed system in record time. Congress’s inaction and complicity were the final nails. I have no faith in this country or its people. Hard to not come to the conclusion that we’re entirely motivated by greed and schadenfreude. We the people have the government we deserve.
What you are seeing is the end result of a fifty year long class war against the middle and working Americans that the rich have waged, and won.
Warren Buffet was making this known two decades ago and no one listened.
Longer than that, I’d say. The rich have been screwing with the lower classes since the country was founded.
This is not the first time though. The reason the 50s were considered a golden age for the middle class is because after the great depression we showed them who is the boss and taxed the shit out of them. We need to do it again, and frankly we need to go beyond posting on Facebook, Instagram, tiktok and other crap.
Those sites exist to keep us in disengaged.
The rich have been screwing with the lower classes since the advent of money. Point me to a time in world history where those with money and power didn’t abuse the rest of us. The problem with hierarchical systems is the worst people always end up rising.
