WizardOfFrobozz

For Americans, doing the protest is an end in itself. They’re a way for comfortable white liberals to telegraph that they’re “on the right side” and “the good ones” so that they can return to doing nothing after a few hours of waving signs around and posting photos.

There is never any plan to escalate, never any thought to what happens if their demands aren’t met. The US does parades. Bring the kids, it’ll be fun- you can LARP participation in democracy.

People forget how much was going right in the 90s, especially in the states. Boomers were in their prime working years (paying into Social Security instead of collecting it), women’s participation in the workforce had hugely expanded, and a decade of strong economic growth and job creation meant more people working, lower unemployment, and more money going into the system. Obviously some of that was demographic luck, but the Clinton economy was actually putting people to work.

Wait… you think the SIZE of the protest matters one bit? When the thing you’re opposing gets WORSE following your protest?

Also, let’s call it what it was. It was a parade. And yes, it was very big and cute.

Unfortunately for white liberals in the US, protesting isn’t an end in itself unless you’re just using it as a way to telegraph that you’re “on the right side.”

Outcomes matter- and the only outcome of the once-every-four-months, “scheduled in advance,” “peaceful” No Kings parade was to communicate to MAGA that they are free to continue doing what they’re doing because their opposition is easily ignored and absolutely nothing to be afraid of.

You’re not asking what to do. You’re saying: “Please acknowledge that none of the things available to me are sufficiently easy, safe, convenient, individually decisive, personally gratifying, or guaranteed to work, so that I can go on pretending that doing nothing is a reasonable response.”

Donald Trump is not even 10% of your country’s problem. Wake up. This shit didn’t start in 2016.

Imagine thinking I owe Americans anything

I’ve answered this question enough times that I’ll play it out for you.

I answer you.

You give me excuses (usually “but that would require me to risk or sacrifice my comfort!”).

I call you a coward.

Someone shows up and deletes all my comments.

So I’ll just jump to calling you a coward and we’ll count down until my post gets deleted and you can make yourself feel better about doing fucking nothing.

Literally all it would take for me to give Americans even an ounce of respect would be for them to make even the most modest effort to live up to the national mythology they’ve spent the better part of a century congratulating themselves for and belligerently forcing down everyone else’s throats.

No, I don’t hold other countries to the same standard, because they haven’t spent generations lecturing the rest of the world about their unparalleled courage, their moral superiority, and their supposedly instinctive resistance to fascism. They made fighting for freedom the centerpiece of their national identity. They demanded admiration for it. They treated any failure to provide that admiration as an insult. And now, when history finally asks them to demonstrate a fraction of the courage they’ve spent eighty years taking credit for, the pants-pissing cowards decide they’re helpless little babies and HOW DARE YOU, FOREIGNER?

Yeah, guy, accusations of moral grandstanding don’t really land when the bar you’ve failed to clear is not sitting around emboldening Nazis.

Americans don’t care.

She said, blandly, before doing fuck all about it.

Later. Cowards get blocked.

Stop dressing your cowardice up as helplessness.

100%. They’ve been sleepwalking into this shit for 30-40 years, have spent the last two doing “shocked Pikachu” and REFUSING to fight back while the other side escalates into a full sprint.

At this point they deserve whatever MAGA gives them and I no longer give a shit- the best I can hope for is that their inaction comes back and bites them so hard the US becomes a cautionary tale for every other country where the far-right is gaining steam.

100%. It makes more sense when you understand that the only intended outcome of Americans’ protests is to reassure the do-nothing cowards participating that they’re “the good ones.” Protesting isn’t a means to an end- protesting is an end in itself, if you’re a fuckin’ clown.

No, running them off campus and leaving their bones intact is how you got here.

They needed to wake the fuck up and open their eyes when their country decided “The Department of Homeland Security” was a very normal thing. If they didn’t then, or at Citizens United, or at masked agents shooting citizens in the street, they won’t now.

They will do nothing. Americans will roll over, allow it to escalate, and accept the escalation as the new normal. Watch.

Did I suggest they were any better?

I mean… they’re not. But fuck you for that disingenuous little sleight of hand where “they didn’t fight fascism hard enough” somehow becomes equivalent to “we voted for the fascists,” and also fuck you for making me defend their cowardly asses.

Oh, okay- so you’re just cowards who spent half a century allowing it because you didn’t want to risk your relative comfort.

Congratulations, you support the death penalty.

Unless, you know, you can point to something death penalty supporters have said that’s any different from what you just said?

In fact, you’ve taken it a step further by including child rapists, who generally aren’t put to death by the state- so not only do you support the death penalty, you support it being expanded.