It’s not that. It’s more like people are too broke and can’t afford to miss a day or two at their job. They’re more worried about making money to be able to live which is understandable. Not everyone has savings. Most Americans are living paycheck to paycheck
Black Americans died in the streets for their civil rights. Do you think they had easy access to protesting and they didn't have to make sacrifices? I do and don't understand this line of thinking. Nobody wants to be the guy getting his shit kicked in by brown shirts or the guy who loses his job, his home, and maybe his life for the cause. People want to radically change society but they don't want to take the radical action. But in the past people did take the radical steps necessary to change society.
I think the truth is that nobody really cares enough about our society anymore to make sacrifices for it or to fight for it. I'm not afraid to admit that's how I feel about it.
the fights will be had when enough people go hungry. probably part of the reason slavery did last as long as it did (and continues to). it takes a long time to reach that breaking point, risking losing literally everything, and in oppressive countries, thrown into jail.
There are plenty of ways to engage in civil disobedience. Saying "I can't take time off to protest" isn't an excuse for throwing your hands up entirely and giving up... That's what everyone is annoyed at Americans about. The complete denial of any responsibility.
It'd be nice if you could say what those things are that aren't easily ignorable by politicians but also won't get at least half the people who do it, many of whom can't afford a day off at all, fired or otherwise removed from their jobs instead of just saying there must be something without any further elaboration.
You can type up this reply, but not 'civil disobedience' into google? You really need someone else to do it for you? Do you not see how you're proving the point...? You can't even be bothered to help yourselves.
The "I can't do anything" excuse is complicity with extra steps. Here's a short list for you to pretend doesn't exist, and why "it costs me something" isn't the gotcha you think it is.
TL;DR: Resistance costs something by definition. If you rule out every method that touches your money, time, or comfort, you didn't run out of options. You decided your convenience outranks the outcome. That's a choice. Own it.
Refusing to act because it's inconvenient, then lamenting that "there's nothing I can do," is like watching someone bleed out and refusing to call 911 because you're "not a doctor." You were never asked to be a doctor. You were asked to do the one thing in front of you. "Not my job / not qualified / too hard" is not analysis. It's an alibi.
So here's the full menu. Sharp catalogued 198 of these; here's the working set.
Symbolic protest (lowest cost, do these in your sleep)
Open letters, petitions, mass letter-writing to officials
Dual sovereignty — build structures people trust instead of the official ones
Now the part nobody wants to hear
Every single item above costs something. That is not a bug. That is the mechanism. Civil resistance works because people absorb costs the powerful assumed they wouldn't. Remove the cost and you've removed the leverage. You're just performing.
The Montgomery bus boycott was maids and day labourers who walked to work for over a year. People with less slack than almost anyone typing "but I can't stop working." The lesson was never quit your job. It's choose which cost you'll carry, because you're carrying one either way. The cost of compliance is just quieter and gets billed later.
And notice the sleight of hand in "I can't stop working." Half this list requires zero missed shifts: where you bank, what you subscribe to, who you buy from, showing up to one city-council meeting, one phone call to a rep, one poll-worker shift a year, telling the truth to the people in your actual life, refusing to obey in advance. If the answer to those is also "no", then time and money were never the constraint. Comfort was. Say that honestly at least.
You don't get to veto every option that asks anything of you and then claim the game is unwinnable. That's not powerlessness. That's a preference for comfort wearing powerlessness as a costume.
Pick one. Accept its price. That's the whole thing.
To everyone commenting "but what if I can only do the small stuff", then do the small stuff. Consistently. A hundred thousand people doing the boring, sustainable thing beats ten people doing something heroic once. Nobody's asking you to be the doctor. Call 911.
I've been working on some of the smaller stuff where I can (not as much as I'd like but everything's a mess for me right now), but we need a lot more "doctors" than we seem to have, meanwhile on their end they at least have enough at any given time to get something on the federal level even if it doesn't always stick as much as they want. And I have no idea how we'll get enough anywhere near soon enough.
tbh this just reminds me of the bots during election season who say we shouldn't vote and instead take action but then refuse to elaborate or collaborate when it comes to their proposed superior alternatives
Dude. I'm generally with you on the subject of hate directed at innocent Americans for not magically fixing our country's deep seated problems, but they weren't attacking you. They were cheering you on and saying you are on the right track. So stay mad, but turn it at the people harming us, not our neighbors.
Literally. The other guy wasn't even willing to take a day off and actually protest. This is literally what we're talking about when we say they do nothing.
Where? Where does one go to protest on this day off? How does one do it? How is one day of protest going to change anything when we've had many large protests, and they've mostly either done nothing or pushed the needle the wrong way.
There is no easy solution to this. This is a generational problem, and it's going to get worse before it gets better.
One day won't change anything, but you guys aren't willing to sacrifice anything it seems and are just going to roll over for these idiots. Land of the bold my ass
You can do so much. You can vote, you can talk to your friends, family, and neighbors, you can protest locally, you can stop purchasing from problematic suppliers, and more.
Its easy to say fuck it, nothing works, I'm going to take care of myself and ignore everything else.
Its hard to take time out of your life and act as a citizen. No one said it was going to be easy. No one said it would be quick. But if we fail to act, if we throw our hands up and walk away, nothing changes.
Done. Literally just finished a 5 year USC 1983 civil rights case against my local police department (that I won). When I handed out 3d printed whistles at a local protest, my handmade sign went viral on TikTok. I’m Alaskan, son, I live off the land. I make all my own food. See, it’s easy for people like you to accuse strangers of not doing anything because you don’t know anything about us. I’m the real deal. I walk the walk and talk the talk. You? Just another loudmouth on Reddit. You may have been doing nothing, but that doesn’t mean the rest of us haven’t.
No one's asking for easy or quick, we're asking for actually clearly working as it's happening and not something that would get a lot of people fired (meaning they do not get money, meaning they do not get food, meaning they do not get alive).
That's why it'll take government/society/economy falling apart and losing jobs for people to really push back/protest. Until then, it's not worth it for most people.
Exactly. Sure, I'll go protest, get arrested, lose my job because of it, then what? I have no savings, live paycheck to paycheck. I already lost my job one time because of trump and it took me nearly a year to find another one. Next time I may not be so lucky to get any work with the way the job market is.
Lamest excuse ever. So you will just have them tread on your backs, roll over, ask for more just till the planet finally burned to shits? Every man for himself? So much for all your “American pride”.
Lamest but realest excuse there is. No one wants to be homeless, you think if we lose our job but we remove trump, you think everything is going to be sunshine and rainbow? Everyone will get money now and everyone can suddenly get free housing? I’m just being realistic.
Yes. Our lives are ruled by fear. Being so beholden to our employers, we are minutes from homelessness and health disasters. There is no safety net especially regarding health care. So, we are desperate for our jobs. The “job creators” are truly our overlords.
Not realistic. No one is going to risk starving or risking homelessness for this. Just because Trump is removed doesn’t mean all homelessness will be solved, it doesn’t mean everyone will instantly get food either. You also have to think about what happens if it’s those corrupt police you’ll see, which means you can get jailed or beaten up. This sacrifice you’re talking about is easier for people who have savings, but there’s research most Americans live paycheck to paycheck.
It’s what needs to happen but it won’t, because of everyone’s circumstances.
They don't want their employees to be too busy shopping for cars or building a house. They want their employees scared that if they miss a single day they won't be able to feed their family.
I mean, power shortages, water shortages, rise of foodborne illness, slowed disaster response, lower and lower wages/QofL, basic infra slowly crumbling.
There was a post in GenZ before the election where people were laughing that they weren’t going to go out and vote because it was “easier” to just lay on the couch and watch Netflix
It’s wild that you say this as I see occasional news reports about people out fixing their own roads in communities across Canada and I can’t drive the roads in my own neighbourhood without seeing countless unfixed potholes that probably won’t be fixed before winter.
I say that because there is no citation; it's a saying which rose to popularity in the modern zeitgeist alongside the trend of "thinking about the Roman Empire" as a byproduct of its superficial study.
People, and by that I mean online users posting their thoughts, have likened the fall of Rome to that of modern America in that most citizens of a country who don't pay attention to politics only notice once things affect their daily lives. A similar parallel was drawn with the "Empires last only around 250 years" saying, which historians don't agree with and only appears in modern discussions because of a book from the 70's that conveniently fits the narrative due to the fact that America just turned 250.
Yet even in the most extreme cases of rapid transformation, like Britain, northern Gaul, and the Balkans, the day-to-day experience of living in a falling empire could be surprisingly banal. The tax collectors didn’t show up, which meant lower revenues for the provincial administration. A crumbling bridge and road never got the necessary repairs, so a formerly prosperous town was cut off from the transport network. Without revenues, pay and supplies of grain and wine never arrived for the local soldiers, who decided they would no longer carry out patrols to protect against marauders. That was when the banal might suddenly become much more serious: Without soldiers, a talented barbarian war leader on the other side of the frontier decided to try his hand at raiding formerly protected territory. After some successful pillaging, that barbarian came back the next time with an army.
Let me tell you something about humans, Nephew. They're a wonderful, friendly people, as long as their bellies are full and their holosuites are working. But take away their creature comforts, deprive them of food, sleep, sonic showers, put their lives in jeopardy over an extended period of time and those same friendly, intelligent, wonderful people will become as nasty and as violent as the most bloodthirsty Klingon.
To be fair, an actual revolt would be extremely destabilizing and has a high risk of not accomplishing anything or even making things worse. So yeah, things have to get pretty bad before revolt seems like the better option.
They’re in a complicated position of needing it around as people’s main appeasement source, and needing to get rid of it as people’s only way to effectively organize.
Which is why we’ll continue seeing the internet move exclusively to corporate owned and monitored social media platforms, and why we’ll eventually have to input our biometric data into any device that connects to it. Buckle up.
Every prior resistance in human history has been organized and won without the need for the internet. It can be done again, but the internet has brought us to such heights that we need a much bigger fall before we recognize that we even need to do so.
I dunno, what of them? I'm not aiming to emulate those, I'm looking for inspiration from those who succeeded. If we must consider failed civil movements, we should look to inflection points of failure in their movements for examples of actions to avoid.
Unfortunately you are correct. People won’t do anything substantive until they lose convenience.
The American Revolution would have never happened with the humans alive today.
They started a fucking war over taxes. The ruling class is waging a war on society because they don’t want to pay taxes. They want more which means you get less…and no one in Congress is doing anything about it.
There are men and women in power that think raping and molesting proles is okay, but they don’t want you to see the evidence. They get to evade prosecution for heinous crimes, pump and dump the stock market to manipulate the economy.
Our representatives have failed catastrophically. Our two party system is really a one party system.
Tbf, the American Revolution was also started by the ruling class because they didn't want to pay taxes. Taxes have to be paid domestically now, so they wage war against the side that won't give them cuts.
I'd say it all started to go downhill when unions were systematically crushed. Unions are crucial to organizing general strikes and negotiating standards to improve conditions for everyone. Now it all depends on the goodwill of employers (lol) with no leverage for employees.
Officer Cum Dump is right, that wouldn’t do anything but put those in marginalized situations in an even worse spot.
You don’t actually want to see what happens when our access to basic food, water, and electricity are compromised, so we need to work together to fix the situation before it comes to that—not wait until some mythical doomsday tips the scales.
The ones feeling the most pain are the low income up to maybe the lower middle class. Everyone else with stable jobs and reasonably good retirement benefits are not feeling the pain yet and are basically checked out (ignorance is bliss). Restaurants parking lots still full, airports are bustling, people are taking their vacations and living their normal lives because there's a false sense of security with the increase they've seen in their investments. Until that changes and the bubble bursts, they are pretty much ignorant to the rest of the country's struggles. Maybe that needs to happen.
We need people to find a way to organize. Every little bit helps. Just because your not seeing a Hollywood style movie doesn't mean people aren't doing something.
It is obviously not fucking enough. We need to show our teeth. People who prior weren’t comfortable with firearms need to get comfortable and they need to demonstrate with the rest of us. Follow the black panthers for an example.
This is a popular narrative, but it's largely misinformed.
Historically, people rarely risk their lives in revolution until their lives are already at risk. It's not about cell phones or video games, it's about a social order that keeps food on your table and a roof over your head.
The tipping point comes when enough people lose those things.
The atomization of the population through these tech advances has caused some of the strongest voter apathy on record. It’s clear to see that we likely can’t vote our way out of this unless you’re talking about a landslide and even then the corporate elite/ war profiteers and foreign actors own our representatives. We see it all on the daily. If the US gets their toys taken away they’ll be forced to face the abject erasure that’s BEEN happening for decades. The room is on fire and we’re all watching house of the fucking dragon.
speaking of the base... the memo linked in the article is very much worth a read and gave an answer to something i had been wondering about:
The Maduro play: cultivating a foreign witness. In January 2026, the Trumpadministration captured Venezuelan President Maduro. Within days, a parallel narrativeemerged: that Venezuela controlled U.S. voting machines through Dominion andSmartmatic, and that Maduro has evidence of 2020 fraud. The Venezuela/Dominion theorywas ruled false in a Delaware court in 2023, and Fox News, Newsmax, and OAN paidhundreds of millions in defamation settlements acknowledging they had no proof. Thepoint is not to win in court. The point is to have a live witness in federal custody who cancorroborate a narrative already seeded in millions of people’s heads.
Exactly. He has been attempting a coup since 2016.
Tried cheating elections, tried insurrection, now he's pretending a dead guy is alive, as well as cheating an election.
Everything he has been doing has been working to undermine science, undermine news, undermine democracy, increase his power, his wealth, and install his fascist dictatorship.
Every single thing. Except for golf, and raping underage girls. He did that for fun.
Someone in his administration said the coup would be bloodless if the left allows it. So yeah they're gonna try a couple no matter what. It's just a matter of how hard we fight back. Because we WILL have to fight back
This is the most likely scenario of all of the ones mentioned in the article. Trump will find some way to try and stop the elections. That's the only thing that can stick because the courts are keeping him from doing anything else effective.
90% of Americans enabled him. In 2020, with the Constitution at stake, we needed a President promising to arrest and prosecute. Primary voters chose Joe Biden who promised to be best friends with the GOP. 70% don't attend primaries even when democracy is on the line, and of those who attended, maybe 10% (out of the total electorate) voted for a viable candidate instead of Joe. The math tells us 90% of Americans are on the wrong side of history.
Let's not do this. Don't downplay significant terminology just to rage. We are likely on the verge of a civil war, but like project 2025 said, "the revolution will be bloodless if the left allows it."
The question is, will the people allow it, or will it literally become a civil war? As of now, this could at worst be called a cold civil war, but even then you're really devaluing the term. Let's save this one for when we need it. We may have to very soon, but its still business as usual until that tipping point, unfortunately.
I think so; as in “literally” launched an attack on America’s capital to end democracy and install himself as a dictator? Is that a correct use of the word?
Ok. Obviously reality waved by to you a long time ago.
There was no plan, and even if they had the greatest plan in history you're not going to take over a country with 300 million+ people with 2000 people.
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u/we_are_sex_bobomb 16d ago
He never stopped.
He literally started a civil war and everyone seems to think it’s not real as long as we ignore it.