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as an american I stand with Canada (lemmy.world)
submitted 1 week ago by to c/canada@lemmy.ca
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[–] 92 points 1 week ago (4 children)

As a Canadian, I ask that Americans do more than stand there.

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  • [–] 22 points 1 week ago (2 children)

    I would say that people are doing stuff, but we're constrained by several things:

    1. Fixed election cycles: Once in office, only the fellow officers of the federal government, whether Congress or the top tiers of the Executive, are able to recall, expel, or remove officials in the government. Since all the branches of our government are held by one political faction, the chance of this is vanishingly small

    2. Lifetime appointment of judges: As a consequence of the actions of some key figures (cough cough, RBG) we're stuck with an extremely conservative and Trump allied Supreme Court that won't block or overturn any of the administration's actions

    3. The leaders of Congress have decided not to exercise their power which for the 249 years prior to 2025 has been the main check against something like this happening. Per point number 1 there's no recourse for citizens until this November essentially. I don't know the statistics in countries like the US vs Canada, but at least here in the South, Senators or Representatives in leadership positions get essentially a free walk at least to the general election, most of them through to reelection

    4. Due to how it was set up, the US Senate, whose main roll is essentially being the red or green light on much of the President's agenda, changes extremely slowly because we don't elect them all at once. Luckily this year, a majority of the Senate incumbents facing reelection (20 out of the 35) are Republicans, so the Democrats could (in theory) make significant gains or at least have more of a chance to

    5. This administration has shown that it really doesn't care about popular opinion at all about anything

    6. As others have mentioned in this thread, the administration has made it a habit of locating and locking up under terrorism charges people that publicly speak out against it and has made it practice to murder people in the street trying to help those in need, so the stakes are significantly higher than political change has been in the past

    The main thing Trump has done is exposed just how much of our government has been de facto. I think one of the main issues is that the founders of the country basically assumed good faith in much of the mechanics the built into the system because that was more of a component of high class culture back then.

    I think it's important to remember for us Americans too though that almost to a man, most of these guys hated each other and did everything in their power to undermine each other. People talk about polarisation in politics today like it's a new thing and totally unprecedented. The Era of Good Feelings lasted like 5 years people, democracy needs disagreement to survive

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  • [–] 9 points 1 week ago

    And I'd like to add that 'hopefully' people have learned a lesson here. I too was incredibly frustrated by the fact that Congress just doesn't get anything done... but I'm not electing a dictator to solve it, wtf

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  • [–] 5 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

    Radical change requires radical action.

    A system built to stall/slow progress to retain the levers of power rarely changes from within.

    We, Americans, should know this better than most. We've grown up with it after all. Propaganda and platitudes are just the smokescreen for the corporate owner classes that own the levers of control.

    Reformation always follows a revolutionary time (violent or not). They're two sides of the same coin.

    We're literally fighting pedophiles and rapists in office (or those who share their ideologies of gaslighting and DARVO.) Do you think they take no for an answer?

    We want bike lanes, public transit, better social services, parks, etc. Well, you have 623 pieces of paper to file, 221 meetings, 73 votes to collect...

    Meanwhile, look how fast those Flock cameras went up with barely any approval. Look how fast those data centers got approved and built. Closed, backroom deals with no input, or even just mayors outright vetoing the town's votes. They have the ideology of rapists.

    And sitting here with all the reasons against us changes nothing.

    I'm proud when they call us radical. Because we're radically fighting to make people's lives better. And the political mechanisms in place are designed to stop that. We live under neoliberal capitalism that is supposed to deliver us freedom and democracy. It has many underlying tensions. One is the freedom to grow capital vs the freedom of peoples. Our systems have been built on the freedom to grow capital OVER the freedom of peoples.

    So the only way left for us to make change is to be disruptive. To get up and do something. And be willing to sacrifice for the greater good because the system is designed to take from us if we step out of line. It's designed to protect those with capital over those who deserve justice.

    Just do whatever you can. I realize it's tough, I'm facing the same choices, putting food on the table, making sure my family is safe. But if we do nothing put complain and post online, what will we accomplish? Show your representatives that they should fear you. They are your employee, you pay them. Maybe stop paying them? Look at the war tax resistors for more info on that. Maybe protest in public spaces outside their residences and offices. Be a nuisance. Don't let them rest. They won't let you rest while they threaten our neighbors and our lives. And please, people, force some democracy into the workplace. We live most of our lives under these little kings. Force legislators to give us worker protections, amend the god damned constitution to give workers the protected right to strike.

    I could go on and on...but vent over. I understand Canadians being frustrated, the world being frustrated, because I'm frustrated with how little Americans have accomplished so far. We're angry but we're still going to work and following the rules mostly because we're still scared. We rely too much on the capitalist machine. Start getting involved locally and building alternatives to the reliance on big corpos as much as possible.

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  • [–] 21 points 1 week ago (2 children)

    People are being imprisoned under terrorist charges for life for standing up to this government in peaceful protest

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  • [–] 26 points 1 week ago (1 child)

    Maybe should learn how to protest from the French.

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  • [–] 4 points 1 week ago (4 children)

    The French police aren't trying to kill the protesters. They literally shoot you in the head with bullets here.

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  • [–] 20 points 1 week ago

    So what's the plan? Good luck on that vote you've got coming up, but let's not be naive about what might happen. Hiding and hoping didn't work out very well for Anne Frank, it won't work for Americans either.

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  • [–] 12 points 1 week ago (3 children)

    I thought you had a second amendment just for this?! If we believe the amount of Americans here telling everyone to arm themselves, and that they are ready to defend themselves if a police officer looks menacing, you'd all be ready for this.

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  • [–] 9 points 1 week ago (1 child)

    Americans are cowards. That 2nd amendment is only good for the NRA to defend guns when idiots kill children in schools in order to send out thoughts and prayers.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 week ago

    The especially annoying part is that a lot of them are acting like preachers telling the rest of the world we should arm ourselves in case our governments becomes a fascist dictatorship, saying they themselves are armed and ready, in case an ICE officer comes towards them with a shock glove, and they will not hesitate to shoot. But then, nobody does it because "they don't want to give the government a reason to escalate things", "it might start a civil war", or "they are scary".

    They spread their pro-gun BS worldwide, boast about their 2nd amendment, then in the next comment, another one apologizes to the rest of the world for their government turning into a fascist dictatorship. I know they're not the same person. I know there's significant nuance to apply, but they're not making it easy.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 week ago (2 children)

    Not all of us carry guns nor want to.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 week ago*

    Indeed. There's obviously nuance to apply but there's so many pro-gun people from the US that sometimes it's hard to conclude anything else. I interacted with gay Americans from Florida 20 years ago and as "liberal" as they were, they were still pro-gun and telling me, a Québecois living in a small town, that I should also arm myself, in case my government became tyrannical or something. Nowadays I read the comments from Americans on different communities of Lemmy, often from LGBTQ+ communities, mostly all encouraging others to get guns, and it's hard to see Americans in any other way.

    It's a good thing that you remind us about this. But surely you understand that even not armed, even if not by protests, there's other actions citizens can take to oppose their governments, and apologizing to, or virtually standing with the people your government is attacking, is not one of those.

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  • [–] 8 points 1 week ago (1 child)

    Let me speak in my American voice: “lol, what are you doing? I’ll follow you.”

    And I’m saying this in a voice that just sprinted a mile and is out of breath.

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