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It’s exactly what they voted for.
I’m reminded about when he broke up a protest against police brutality to get a photo op in front of a church in 2020. I guess that sort of thing is just another tuesday
I never forgot about that. But the problem is that every fucking day Trump does something insane. It is actually really, REALLY hard to keep up. When anti-Trumpers do something wrong, it is often the biggest thing they did and people will not shut up about it.
I mean imagine if this a crime like burglary. A guy who did a single burglary years ago has obviously done something wrong, but what if you got a second person who provably did hundreds? I’m sorry, but you can’t just focus on the latest shit. Trump has been doing this basically his entire life. He has no redeeming virtues whatsoever. Even during his ‘business’ days in the 80s and 90s when he was going from failure to failure, he would insult his investors that he didn’t screw them up even more… and they would still give him more money for his next failed scheme. I don’t get it.
“He’s not calling for the murder of his political opponents” yes he did. He said certain political opponents are terrorists and deserve the death penalty. Also, this is about him shitting on his own people, don’t change the subject you piece of shit.
They also don’t care he just took a wrecking ball to part of the White House. They don’t care that he has crashed the economy or broken the government. They are coward sycophants.
I think the demolition of the White House is particularly poetic. It also shows us what our federal government is willing to let the regime do without input from the commonwealth.
The No Kings numbers was a warning, a bellwether. Let’s see if they’re able to pick up on what it means.
No kings needs to triple in attendance before people take it seriously. I don’t mean that as in insult. And even then it techniqally doesn’t do anything directly. If people were serious about all this they would be boycotting American products and entertainment. That probably the realest thing that can be done without bloodshed. no more streaming, no more eating out, no more brand name clothes… Our money is bloody and it funds Americas nightmare… WE are funding all this. It is US participating. This is something people deny and until people stop denying their part nothing will ever change. Its surreal and takes effort to admit.
That probably the realest thing that can be done without bloodshed.
The most effective non-violent action we can take is to organize a General Strike.
The country would be brought to its knees if suddenly deprived of profit and labor. That tactic was extremely effective in Chile in 2019, and had they not fallen for the trick of liberal reform, they would’ve had a successful revolution on their hands with virtually no bloodshed.
If you aren’t in a union (or even if you are, it’s worth dual-carding), please consider joining the IWW to unionize your workplace (bonus: you’ll get higher wages, better benefits, and more time off if you succeed!) to strengthen a general strike if we manage to enact one.
And for our international friends, you should join one as well, as fascism is gaining momentum globally. If your country isn’t listed below, just contact the IWW directly in the link above.
Helen Cox Richardson advises general strikes cause division among the organized groups striking (possibly in what terms as appropriate to relent), that targeted boycotts seem to prove more effective in the United States.
I can’t be sure, having never seen general strikes manifest or boycotts that lasted. Boycotts also rule out those of us who live in poverty who can’t afford to have opinions. Or as Marge Simpson put it We can’t afford to shop at any store that has a philosophy. We just need a TV.
So boycotts are revolution by the petite bourgeoisie, rather than by the third estate, which is why France still contends with capitalism and authoritarian drift.
I, personally, don’t know the right answer, or the most effective strategy against the current regime. I’d argue both are good methods, but maybe we should look for third and fourth fronts of attack.
targeted boycotts seem to prove more effective in the United States
Targeted boycotts have never removed a party from power. There has never been a general strike in the US either. But general strikes in other countries have been effective. I can’t think of anywhere that boycotts have accomplished much unless they’ve been accompanied by mass action.
I can’t be sure, having never seen general strikes manifest or boycotts that lasted.
Look outside the US. US labor law has been rigged to prevent unions having any power, and the US has always sucked at worker solidarity (except for some sporadic outbreaks of rebellion in the early 20th century before the IWW was suppressed).
Boycotts also rule out those of us who live in poverty who can’t afford to have opinions.
The swadeshi movement organized by Gandhi largely involved poor people resisting exploitation by state monopolies. It was pretty effective, though the boycott was only one part of a much broader strategy. The same could be said about the Montgomery bus boycott, though the goals of the SCLC were narrower than regime change (when King tried broadening it to something that looked a bit more social-democatic and applicable to all working Americans, he caught a bullet). Same thing happened to Fred Hampton when he proved effective at building alliances that defied the prevailing racially based divide-and-rule scheme. The elite really doesn’t want us showing solidarity.
For a General Strike to work, there does need to be a somewhat unified vision of what the strike is against. That means getting workers educated about the situation as much as possible.
A boycott can sometimes work against individual corporations, but a boycott to make the government listen would require sustained participation from a massive section of the population, which seems unlikely to say the least. In contrast, a general strike only needs workers in critical unionized industries to join in to cause a virtual halt of economic activity (dock workers, train workers, truckers, etc). This lowers the numbers needed to be effective by an order of magnitude, and is thus much more feasible. History has shown it to be the most effective non-violent tool we have for over 100 years, and so far nothing else has come close.
Prefiguration could be considered a 3rd method. Building the alternative systems we want to see and use in the world to lower our dependence on the current system facilitates the ability to enact general strikes, boycotts, and reduces the leverage they have over us to not enact resistance.
A fourth method would be perhaps more extreme, like collectively destroying all of the world’s databases that contain financial debt records, Fightclub/Mr.Robot style. But that would require extreme coordination between established capable groups, and currently is not a feasible option.
In contrast, a general strike only needs workers in critical unionized industries to join in to cause a virtual halt of economic activity
There’s no requirement that they be unionized. Anyway, that’s unrealistic in the US.
History has shown it to be the most effective non-violent tool we have for over 100 years
Keep in mind that previous effective broadly-based strikes have not always been entirely nonviolent. Scabs are not always treated all that nicely, and neither are the police and private-sector goons who are sent in to beat down the strikers. During the most effective period of strike power being used, there were also attacks on assets and occasionally individuals. Non-violence is good, but there are some necessary conditions for it to be effective. And one big one is that the media cannot be controlled by the current ruling elite. Without that, there’s no way for mass action to sway public opinion.
There’s no requirement that they be unionized. Anyway, that’s unrealistic in the US.
It helps, because unions will have strike funds to supplement worker’s income during the strike. Most American’s have no savings and are living hand to mouth, which may discourage them from participating in a general strike.
For your second paragraph, I don’t disagree. Even with the potential for that, I consider it a mostly non-violent action, at least in comparison to a civil war.
when I saw the pictures I thought it perfectly represented the state of the US and our government.
That video . . …
just imagine Obama doing that during his term. i think half of them would just straight up die to an aneurysm. they had conniptions when he wore a tan suit.
haha
Oh, man… imagine not reading the news for the last few days and then reading this title.
This is exactly what happened to me just now.
Nothing surprises me anymore.
Republicans don’t understand satire or metaphor. They think trolling is wit.
Sycophants. That’s all that’s left in his inner circle.
That’s by design. Remember what a revolving door his first administration was? He learned from that and surrounded himself with spineless sycophants this time around.
Beyond the inner circle, Republicans are scared shit-less of stepping out of line. Those who dare are under death threats or they are fired/primaried/removed.
They want to be threatened and bossed around. That’s why they’re authoritarian enablers. Often it traces back to abusive parents. They’re trying to impose the hell of their childhoods on those of us who didn’t have such fucked-up experiences, because those are the only conditions where they feel like they know how to respond.
fucking pussies, grow some goddamn balls, as they would say
That’s all it ever was.
Pedofile shits all over America. GOP celebrates
He is using satire to make a point.
If only that were satire
Trump has no sense of humor and is too stupid to do satire.
I wish our journalists did ANY amount of push-back because calling it satire is just a red herring and I wish they wouldn’t even engage with it.
OK, let’s assume it is satire used to make a point. What point exactly was he making? That he IS a king and is shitting on us all?
Shatire. As Sean Connery might have called it.
Shatire.
You just know that was tossed around Colbert’s writer’s room, before they decided that might wind up with them off the air sooner.
At least I have more dignity and self respect than a large portion of the people running my country
I mean, technically: the most powerful man in the world cannot do satire, because it requires punching up.
There is a lot of punching up he can do: morality, intelligence, compassion, basic human decency. When you’re at the very bottom of something, there’s nowhere else to punch but up.
That doesn’t sound like satire either and it wouldn’t be his job anyway.
You’d probably also be more suited to run it.
Yeah that’s not what satire means. And it isn’t funny either; but I know that half the pop doesn’t know any other type of “humor”. Literally shitting on other people, hahahaha
They want to see people punished, metaphorically or literally.
It’s shocking to witness what’s happening in the US of A as an outsider.
Well, unfortunately many other countries aren’t looking at the USA as a warning, but as an example.
The right wing is gaining ground in a lot of places that should know better.
That is true! The rise of right wing billionaire funded regimes is not a mistake but a slow tip towards an actual nightmare for many.
The warnings were there when the George W. Bush administration was doing all the things. We should have learned then never again to vote Republican, but we did. Twice. For the same monster both times.
We need to be having a sober conversation as to why and how that happened, given democracy doesn’t work when people vote based on vibes or propaganda feels.
democracy doesn’t work when people vote based on vibes or propaganda feels.
That is the line of reasoning that leads to anti-democratic authoritarianism. Humans use heuristics and emotion to make decisions the vast majority of the time. We might call that a values-based judgment if we are being charitable.
The current leadership uses notions of loyalty and in-group/out-group membership, and their MAGA supporters are swayed by disgust emotions manipulated by propagandists. However, I’ll admit that I’m driven by sense of fairness, or even moral outrage at naked corruption and abuse of power, waste, etc. We all do it. When people are hurting, you have to give them a solution that feels good -feels like it will make things better. Sending a strong message that crony capitalists are siphoning all the wealth off the middle-class to make you poorer, and they need to be taxed into the dirt feels like vindication and something that could work, for example. You have to hit both sides of the human coin.
No, this is a line of reasoning that leads to something different than what we got, which could be authoritarianism, or could be a better democracy… or we could try sortition, eliminating the role of the politician, entirely.
This was established in the Federalist Papers, that democracy works when the constituent a) knows their personal best interests and b) votes accordingly. In fact much of the post Southern Strategy GOP movement towards authoritarianist domination of the federal theater has been focused on getting constituents to vote against their own best interests, whether in favor of vibes or towards single issues (e.g. abortion access, gun control) or based on cultural pressure (liberalism = communism).
There are many directions we can go to make the system more democratic, many of which include moving away from FPTP elections (which promote a two party system, making third parties untenable) but we’ve also had some success in actually educating the constituency and instilling in them a sense of duty to do their civic homework and know what they’re voting for.
If people didn’t respond to these, then Trump would have won in November 2024 by a much wider margin than fractions of percents spread across several battleground states, and he wouldn’t have needed the support of the EC and gerrymandering to give the illusion of a mandate. The GOP and its vibes-based voting system is propped up by a trillion-dollar propaganda machine to keep Americans uninformed and believing in the Joe Rogan way of life.
If that’s the best that democracy can do, I will be the first to dispose of it for something better. But I believe democracy can absolutely do better.
given democracy doesn’t work when people vote based on vibes or propaganda feels.
Unfortunately, it seems like a lot of people are primarily vibes driven. Everyone is, in some cases or other. For example, a lot of otherwise reasonable people will flip their shit if you suggest eating less meat for environmental or animal welfare reasons. You just get excuses and variations of “but i like it” and “but i’m a good person”.
imagine living here.
It’s upsetting but I am the least surprised I could ever be. They’ve had decades of warnings and done nothing about it as things just got worse and worse and even still they refuse to admit where they are.
“The president uses social media to make a point,” Johnson told reporters Monday. “He believes that he is a king and that any protest against him or his appointed officials is treason. In essence, he is a fucking traitor who never should have gotten elected the first time, let alone the second, and I and my colleagues are going to work to impeach him and remove him from office, just as soon as we take our tongues out of his asshole.”
– Mike Johnson, if he was slightly less of a toady piece of shit traitor.
If he ever said “fucking” or “asshole,” I’m pretty sure an alert would pop up on his son’s phone
They eat his shit daily, so why not watch him play with it
Human shit would of course support this.
