We are at the end of half a century of destroying the working class and militarizing our police.
With no social safety net, healthcare tied to employment, and at-will employment, there’s no working people able to afford a sustained non violent protest.
Capitalist controlled media has eroded any sense of class consciousness amongst the common people, who are more inclined to be angry about the “theft” of a billionaires pile of gold through taxation, than the everyday theft of the value their labor produces.
There have been many one day protests, large ones, but society has been reshaped to make sustained protests virtually impossible. A captured media landscape and election system insulate politicians from consequences. Together these depress the incentive for non violent protest.
Violent insurrection would be met with a ton of state violence.
People, pretty reasonably, aren’t excited to be beaten, sent off to CECOT, or killed.
And of course, I’ll note the many logistic issues. America is fucking huge, most Americans don’t have $500 to cover an emergency, no one has an extra $500+ to fly across country for a do nothing protest in DC. Protest coverage is met with derision by centrist as “too disruptive” while the right wing n enjoys the snippets of our police state bashing protesters with state sanctioned violence.
So a lot of people do the calculus, spend time, money, and energy to go out into the street to be beaten and maybe disappeared so that nothing will change, and they sit it out.
Then I fear that the US will soon become a dictatorship in all but name. I don’t see how this can be prevented. One thing is certain, however: in a repressive autocracy, there will be many more, much more tangible reasons to put up with everything the rulers do.
I share this fear. I had hoped at some point the people would have had enough.
I think at first I considered it some great failing in my fellow countrymen. While that may play some part, I’ve found it more instructive to understand this moment as a result of a very intentional project.
It’s the kind of project that wealth allows you to pursue. Institutions like the heritage foundation and fix news cost money, but the return on that investment can’t be beat. It took a couple decades to bend the world to their will but the results are astounding.
You have the exploited championing their own exploitation. Extolling the virtues of those that take from them. They protect the very systems that harm them, and at this point are so indoctrinated that they can not fathom any other way of arranging things.
At every step down this road there was someone whose duty was to stop it but found it more profitable to stand aside. And now I fear we are too late to stop it
We are at the end of half a century of destroying the working class and militarizing our police.
With no social safety net, healthcare tied to employment, and at-will employment, there’s no working people able to afford a sustained non violent protest.
Capitalist controlled media has eroded any sense of class consciousness amongst the common people, who are more inclined to be angry about the “theft” of a billionaires pile of gold through taxation, than the everyday theft of the value their labor produces.
There have been many one day protests, large ones, but society has been reshaped to make sustained protests virtually impossible. A captured media landscape and election system insulate politicians from consequences. Together these depress the incentive for non violent protest.
Violent insurrection would be met with a ton of state violence.
People, pretty reasonably, aren’t excited to be beaten, sent off to CECOT, or killed.
And of course, I’ll note the many logistic issues. America is fucking huge, most Americans don’t have $500 to cover an emergency, no one has an extra $500+ to fly across country for a do nothing protest in DC. Protest coverage is met with derision by centrist as “too disruptive” while the right wing n enjoys the snippets of our police state bashing protesters with state sanctioned violence.
So a lot of people do the calculus, spend time, money, and energy to go out into the street to be beaten and maybe disappeared so that nothing will change, and they sit it out.
Then I fear that the US will soon become a dictatorship in all but name. I don’t see how this can be prevented. One thing is certain, however: in a repressive autocracy, there will be many more, much more tangible reasons to put up with everything the rulers do.
I share this fear. I had hoped at some point the people would have had enough.
I think at first I considered it some great failing in my fellow countrymen. While that may play some part, I’ve found it more instructive to understand this moment as a result of a very intentional project.
It’s the kind of project that wealth allows you to pursue. Institutions like the heritage foundation and fix news cost money, but the return on that investment can’t be beat. It took a couple decades to bend the world to their will but the results are astounding.
You have the exploited championing their own exploitation. Extolling the virtues of those that take from them. They protect the very systems that harm them, and at this point are so indoctrinated that they can not fathom any other way of arranging things.
At every step down this road there was someone whose duty was to stop it but found it more profitable to stand aside. And now I fear we are too late to stop it
It will not be something we can fix in our lifetime.
All we can do is build foundations for our descendants to hopefully build into a legitimate resistance effort.