Which do you think is easier, insurgency or leaving twitter?
I didn't just protest against this.
I voted, ran mutual aid networks, donated, and canvassed for progressive candidates. And when that failed I canvassed for moderates that I didn't want. I went to churches and asked why they were pushing this garbage. My aunt and uncle were told they weren't welcome in their local church unless they voted for trump and disowned all family members that didn't. The church has a trump sign right on the front lawn. When I went to ask about that being illegal they looked at me like I had 3 heads. My aunt and uncle had to move cities.
My friend at the the no kings protest had police fire a beanbag into his eyesocket. He was in his second story apartment watching the protest from above, I was right next to him. We weren't even on the street and they fired right into his eye. He was forced to take a plea deal even though the cops had body cameras. The footage was never handed over, despite a FOIA request. He got no money. He already didn't have health insurance.
Its comes off as incredibly hollow when I hear europeans say "nobody tried to stop this" or "Its amazing how little resistance they've faced". We had millions of people protesting without a peep in the news.
I really don't want the hear talking about how we should use the 2nd amendment from people that can't even quit twitter.
Take care
But we also hear that from our fellow Americans all the time.
Every time there's a school shooting or spree killing, we're lectured about that being a price we should be willing to pay for our right to keep and bear arms. Every time gun control comes up, we're told that America's well armed militias are the only thing keeping our government from sliding into tyranny, and that all of our rights are vouchsafed by the second amendment. Americans love to quote Thomas Jefferson on watering the tree of liberty with the blood of tyrants. They were willing to revolt over covid restrictions. They were willing to riot and coup over imaginary communists stealing the election. They were willing to turn Portland into a war zone over George Floyd. It's telling that the response to Trump, while not nothing, has been positively timid in comparison.
Don't complain about Europeans turning a mirror onto Americans' hollow rhetoric. Plenty of other countries have been able to deal with corruption and tyranny without a Constitutional right to keep and bear arms and a billion dollar gun industry flooding the country with weapons. It's good that you actually went out and did the work, which is more than most Americans, but you know protests alone don't mean a thing.
Also the vast majority of Twitter users are American, and Americans aren't exactly quitting it either.
Americans don't have a representative government, europeans do. Lets be honest, you know in your heart that the vast majority of americans want to stop school shootings, don't you??
Even to this day, a majority of americans are in favor of universal background checks, and an assault weapons ban. Check pew, gallup, anywhere you'd like.
Over 60% of americans when polled, say they want universal healthcare. The difference between american and europe is: over here we don't get what we want, even when the vast majority support it. Over here the cops just shoot us in the face.
>Also the vast majority of Twitter users are American, and Americans aren't exactly quitting it either.
And they should quit too, but right now we're talking about europe.
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I also want to circle back and say, portland was not turned into a war zone over george floyd. The protest spanned over a few city blocks, and 99% of the city carried on as normal. You're parroting disgusting propaganda, straight from the mouth of fox news.
Can't you see that we have a media machine that's invested in making the left look violent? Don't believe everything your hear from the american news.
> They were willing to revolt over covid restrictions. They were willing to riot and coup over imaginary communists stealing the election.
Its fitting you bring up these examples as if they weren't proving my point. These events were both largely orchestrated on twitter. Same thing they did in myanmar.
You can help fight against the machine by leaving twitter. Its free. Its easy.
I don't think we know that, and I think you're looking at your fellow Americans with rose-tinted glasses.
Let's face reality. Two years after one of the worst school shootings in US history, Uvalde county, TX voted for Trump (66.3% vs 33.0% for Harris). Not to mention that Trump won the popular election nationwide.
Nobody put a gun on Americans' heads and forced them to vote for Trump. They did because they wanted to.
I'm not saying the media is infallible, but if you view the situation as evil billionaires and media forcing gun rights, private healthcare, and ICE on oppressed Americans, you're drawing battle lines in a way that doesn't make sense.
But at some point, blocking is the answer. I tend to agree we’re already there
Yesterday their moronic immigration gestapo shot and killed an innocent citizen.
In the name of what.. safety?
They are just stretching the rubber band which will eventually snap and smack them in the face. USA is increasingly having more and more poor population which is well armed and has nothing to lose.
The Dimbocrats are the Repugnants are all the same: protect the interests of the wealthy.
Sure you can argue about the "lesser of two evils" and I couldnt argue with that that is true. Nevertheless the "lesser of two evils" wont stop the enshitificatoin just maybe slow it down a tad.
Do you really think there is only the same sliver of daylight between KH and DT as there was between Bush and Clinton? Look around and answer this for yourself. Do you think that?
Then ask yourself one more question: who benefits from you still thinking that? And finally one more: how do they benefit?
Unfortunately, Renee Nicole Good, a poet and mother of 3 has children who will now grow up without a mother and without justice or recompense because her murderer was a federal official who has nearly unqualified immunity to state and federal criminal prosecution and no civil Bivens nor 1983 actions can be brought. These officials are creating an image of lawless paramilitary with a monopoly on violence unrestrained from any meaningful accountability. Governor Walz and Mayor Frey are telling white lies as to what can be done because they have essentially zero power to investigate or prosecute federal officials. ICE & CBP has only paid out $1 million in damages total for every wrongful death claims in years... it just doesn't happen. ICE & CBP are a "samurai" mafia without a code who can and do kill almost anyone with almost total impunity. Only COTUS can fix this by allowing 1983-like claims and limiting QI/SI, but this is a pipe-dream because the team completely in-charge is deferential to law enforcement over unimportant, non-rich people.
tl;dr: ICE agents can legally get away with killing almost anyone far more easily than 90's LAPD.
While (unfortunately) rather heroic in todays day and age, I fear the retribution he's now called upon himself, Germany, and the EU in particular. Vance and Stephen Miller are already always whispering in Trump's ear about the evils of Europe / the EU, convincing him to take action on whatever they want won't be hard.
Sidebar: the fact that we have to be fearful of retribution due to such rhetoric is really all that needs to be said about the timeline we're currently living through.
My new impression is that there's a nasty streak in the US that simply went against other people for a long time - Native Americans, African slaves, South America, Iran and the Middle East - and it was inevitably going to come out against Europe too at some point. At the end of the day, Trump can do what he does because the Congress accepts it, it accepts it because they are ideologically aligned, and a majority of American voters selected them.
I'm not picking on the US here. Plenty of countries, maybe all, have a nasty streak or ten, it's human nature. But I though the US is actually somehow better, with its institutions, its painful lessons from the country's birth, yada yada. Actually maybe they're as bad as the rest of us, but just much more powerful.
The Elites call the shots. So if America is behaving in an ugly way the blame lies almost exclusively with them.
The vast majority is going to suffer again, for the benefit of a handful of ultra wealthy psychopaths.
As if they don't have enough already ?