- There have been protests, including some largish ones. As with things like labor action, they happen in the US but 99% of it doesn't get covered, you could think they don't happen at all unless you pay attention to fairly obscure media sources or happen to live near where they're going on, where local news might briefly mention it (after the fact).
- Protesting hasn't accomplished anything in the US in 80 years (EDIT: Almost 60, LOL, usually I math wrong the other direction when calculating how long ago things were). As with letting our politicians tell obvious lies to interviewers with minimal push-back, not having effective protests is just... American, or at least has been for much of living memory.
- Like 80% of the country's not paying any attention, they have zero idea how bad this already is and what's already teed up for the next month or two. Shit the people following this would never believe a person could have missed, they don't know about.
- Civic knowledge is abysmal so a huge proportion of the population doesn't understand why stuff like normalizing open corruption (that one, we let slide in Trump's first term and the Democrats did nothing to draft laws to codify prior norms, when they had the chance, so that's... great) is extremely dangerous. Or that the President in fact does not legally have the power to do a bunch of the things he's doing, and that letting him get away with it anyway means the end of the rule of law and the beginning of authoritarianism. Like half of folks don't understand marginal tax rates and even more think foreign aid is some insane amount of our budget, like 20%. When it comes to our political system, I dunno about other countries, but Americans are, to be blunt, shockingly dumb. They don't know how things are supposed to be or where the guardrails are, so don't recognize how very far off-course we are.
we do show our outrage on social media… americans have long been tamed and are no longer activists and small fraction that are have been reduced to ridicule “wokeness”
no doubt... woman's marches were decent too back in '17... I think BLM-style protest can still prop up to protest things like police brutality etc but generally I think US public has been tamed, especially over the past decade. even our veterans, who fought for the freedoms and constitution and whatnot are sitting quietly while VA is being gutted and while they are losing jobs by the thousands (many vets went into public sector and became govies after their service)... and veterans are sitting put and letting all this shit happen you know where we are as a country...
damn - kent state ... not sure how many people on HN were born before kent state... doubt there is a living soul in the USA that has a fear of militant police and state forces and think kent state massacre is just around the corner
Here is one asking why there aren't more protests, one answer worries that "protesting in the streets will get people put in prisons being used as slave labor."
These are just the first three results that I found in a moment of searching but I could go on all night. I'm not saying I agree with them or that their thinking is perfect but we can be certain that numerous people are afraid of violent reactions from the state if they try to protest what is happening.
True, but I think it’s a distinction without a difference. If 30% of folks voted for it and 40% didn’t care enough to show up, it’s still a damning indictment of the American people.
Note: I can’t see the original comment, so hopefully I’m not defending some heinous remark…
Americans as a rule tend to look down on protesting.
America is very geographically dispersed. Any commerce that gets impacted generally only draws attention locally. And because of the strong urban/rural political divide in the US, you are mostly only going to attack your own interests.
That is not to say there is not a lot of active mobilization. Mostly through our legal system as well as PR.
Some other things to note:
- While the extent of the damage to the federal government is massive, the domestic impacts are not really felt yet. Most of the stuff that comes from "government" is paid for and administered at the state level.
- The current party won the popular vote and controls both houses of Congress. So most of the frustration is happening between the American people for letting this happen.
It will take some time for people to organize, and it's still quite cold out. Also, Trump has indicated his desire to use the US military against protests that get violent, and nearly every peaceful protest still has some folks going around being violence and destructive.
There are protests, but the media isn't covering them like they did with BLM. However, we need more protests. We need larger protests. We need to do more.
What, specifically, would protests accomplish? The people in power, in every level of our government, do not care. No one else has any power to do anything. The media provably doesn’t tell the truth about protests, and just looks for the clicks.
This isn’t a civilized European country. Protesting only works when the people who can affect change are listening to the people.
Not really. A single group of people controls every level of the federal government, tacitly supported by every major social media and major media group in the country. There’s no reason they would fear a protest, especially knowing how easy it is, over the next 18 months, to propagandize people into staying home.
Who do you think the people “below the people in power” are, and why would they have any reason to fear anything but a purity test from someone even further to the right?
They did... by voting... and are mostly happy with the new trajectory. Perhaps your perception is being manipulated into thinking there's something wrong with this new direction.
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[ 2.1 ms ] story [ 90.0 ms ] threadYou don't seem to care.
- Protesting hasn't accomplished anything in the US in 80 years (EDIT: Almost 60, LOL, usually I math wrong the other direction when calculating how long ago things were). As with letting our politicians tell obvious lies to interviewers with minimal push-back, not having effective protests is just... American, or at least has been for much of living memory.
- Like 80% of the country's not paying any attention, they have zero idea how bad this already is and what's already teed up for the next month or two. Shit the people following this would never believe a person could have missed, they don't know about.
- Civic knowledge is abysmal so a huge proportion of the population doesn't understand why stuff like normalizing open corruption (that one, we let slide in Trump's first term and the Democrats did nothing to draft laws to codify prior norms, when they had the chance, so that's... great) is extremely dangerous. Or that the President in fact does not legally have the power to do a bunch of the things he's doing, and that letting him get away with it anyway means the end of the rule of law and the beginning of authoritarianism. Like half of folks don't understand marginal tax rates and even more think foreign aid is some insane amount of our budget, like 20%. When it comes to our political system, I dunno about other countries, but Americans are, to be blunt, shockingly dumb. They don't know how things are supposed to be or where the guardrails are, so don't recognize how very far off-course we are.
The ones I heard of were around a few thousand at most. That is not large in this context.
sad state of affairs for sure…
It's also a responsibility, in some situations.
1. https://www.reddit.com/r/TwoXPreppers/comments/1igugaw/the_5...
This one talks about concerns over the police sending agent provocateurs to protests to instigate violence and let them crack down on the protestors.
2. https://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/1j3enrz/trump_ame...
This one is a thread about the government limiting student protests, several comments actually mention Kent State by name
3. https://www.reddit.com/r/AskALiberal/comments/1i1vsp6/why_no...
Here is one asking why there aren't more protests, one answer worries that "protesting in the streets will get people put in prisons being used as slave labor."
These are just the first three results that I found in a moment of searching but I could go on all night. I'm not saying I agree with them or that their thinking is perfect but we can be certain that numerous people are afraid of violent reactions from the state if they try to protest what is happening.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kent_State_shootings
Plurality.
Note: I can’t see the original comment, so hopefully I’m not defending some heinous remark…
Nuclear proliferation is going to go apeshit. Undoing that is very, very hard.
America is very geographically dispersed. Any commerce that gets impacted generally only draws attention locally. And because of the strong urban/rural political divide in the US, you are mostly only going to attack your own interests.
That is not to say there is not a lot of active mobilization. Mostly through our legal system as well as PR.
Some other things to note:
- While the extent of the damage to the federal government is massive, the domestic impacts are not really felt yet. Most of the stuff that comes from "government" is paid for and administered at the state level.
- The current party won the popular vote and controls both houses of Congress. So most of the frustration is happening between the American people for letting this happen.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/15_February_2003_anti-war_prot...
In retrospect it was obviously a worthy protest, although it it didn't accomplish anything.
NYC had 300-400k protesters that day, according to the article.
This isn’t a civilized European country. Protesting only works when the people who can affect change are listening to the people.
Who do you think the people “below the people in power” are, and why would they have any reason to fear anything but a purity test from someone even further to the right?
How do you get to "mostly" from there?