Individuals acting individually results in nothing except the death of a comrade. Action happens through coordination, intelligence gathering and collective action.
I mean thats true but i think many people are too afraid/low energy/uninformed to unite with others in order to coordinate. But i hope i am wrong and the people of the U.S. take back their country before Drumpf and his Goons have done too much damage (which i guess you could argue has already happened).
If the country goes whaere it looks like it is going
Eventually we each are going to have to decide
When a resistance group is formed ..
Will you join?
And what are you willing to do?
Curiously I'm having to deal with this very conflict. I want to join the resistance, but I'm (literally) allergic to sunlight (which precludes street demonstrations) and I'm a goblin when it comes to in-person social development, such as organizing.
The mutual aid groups in Sacramento are scarce, so it's difficult to ask them.
Do I make useful memes and infographics? Not sure.
Curiously, the nearest ICE hq is in San Francisco, and there are resistence movements there interfering with ICE action.
Dude, get yourself connected with your local resistance organizations anyway! There are so many ways to contribute that aren't waving cardboard signs in the sunlight—research, making maps, updating websites, emailing politicians, running social media outreach, designing signs for printing, surveillance, counter-surveillance, reporting, and yes, making infographics. There are even organizations that conduct themselves almost entirely online.
Probably cook.
Travel along with the resistance, tending to troops, fixing meals, fetching ammo, just a worker bee in the military machine.
I was hoping at the No Kings demonstration at the California capitol, there'd be a pavilion giving away free tacos, and I'd volunteer to help make them. Alas, no one else acted on the idea.
Option two was to find one of the organizers and man a free water bottle station. But those didn't happen either. Demonstrators were just advised to bring snacks and water.
Only after the fact did I notice the local mutual aid orgs had very little online presence. So, yeah, I'm back to researching. If I do ever find the Rebel Alliance, then conversations will be had. For now, I'm looking at groups like Indivisible with limited success.
In the 30's and 40's resistances were everywhere and weren't always visible. Spreading the news or setting up infrastructure for resistance movements were just as viable as boots on the ground and protests.
Whether or not the average person will go to a protest is heavily studied in Game Theory.
Unsurprisingly, the consistent finding is that either the person needs to have no risk from attending (lol, facial recognition and Palintir), have no costs to attending, or things have to be otherwise be bad enough that they genuinely think that things can't get worse for them if they attend and change might actually happen if they attend.
See you at work on Monday I guess.
or things have to be otherwise be bad enough that they genuinely think that things can't get worse for them if they attend and change might actually happen if they attend.
Usually, the main reason for protests and revolutions to grow immensely is if the means of livelihood is affected. No food to eat? Blame the government. No jobs? Blame the government. No housing? Blame the government. They're cutting pensions? Blame the government. Speaking of which, the planned pension reform by Putin, years ago, was the only time his leadership was seriously threatened by the public. Otherwise, Russian people don't care if Kremlin bombs the Georgians or Ukrainians, or dissidents keep flying off the window, so long as their means of living are not touched. In that sense, individuals are selfish and don't mind authoritarianism as long as they themselves are not severely affected.
Humans are complex and are not naturally predisposed to crave for democracy, contrary to what many Westerners believe. Ultimately, it is a question of liberty versus security. Some prefer security so long as standards of living is well kept by the ruling elites, and certain degree of freedom is allowed to the public. That's why, unfortunately, some authoritarian leaderships persists for so long. Saudi Arabia is an absolute monarchy for as long as anyone can remember, and Francisco Franco's fascist regime survived long, in spite of the fall of fascism after World War 2.
the person needs to have no risk from attending
The government deals in violence and knows how to handle groups of protestors, whether they originate as peaceful or violent. Don’t play to their strengths by engaging them on that level and giving them a confrontation that they can escalate.
Non-participation, boycotts, malicious compliance, quiet quitting, anticonsumption, and birthstriking are more my style. It’s not glamorous or quick, but governments are notoriously inept at dealing with situations that they can’t just beat or shoot at. They don’t know what to do when a hammer is an ineffective tool for the job.
These sorts of actions may be inconvenient or cause you to forgo certain things that you want. However it doesn't put you in any actual risk, whether it be physical, legal, or financial. The non-risk aspect of it means that it has a much lower barrier to entry, and thus a lower threshold for how bad things need to get before people take action.
This is making a good point, but I still have to be here for my kids. I'll donate, vote, and argue, but I'm not fighting anyone off because my kids need me.
Leaving the country is also an option we're looking into, but my wife thinks we should stay here and continue to do what little we can.
Leaving does more than staying
The government doesn't need you to agree with them, but they do need your tax dollars. Well educated, high earners leaving does a lot. Being the recipient of those people is a large part of the US's dominance over the past 70 years
Except US citizens have to pay US taxes even when living abroad. Something that does not exist in most countries, because it's as dumb as it sounds. Yes, they are taxed twice (by both countries).
If those high earners were protesting and fighting, feeding those with less, supporting rebellion with their money and knowledge instead of working or fleeing, it would certainly solve that problem.
Their kids need them too. The point of solidarity is accepting the same risks as them because they don't get to make that choice.
My kids are the reason I'd be going to fight.
Learning a foreign language and runing the fuck out of US is also an option. You don't need risk everything just to better a country where 60% of population hates you and rest is barely neutral.
This is how you concentrate evil, and doing so in a huge area with the most power and resources is a bad idea.
The better idea is to organize, spread the good out, beat gerrymandering, beat FPTP, regulate campaign funding and special interest lobbying, change the laws, bring back evidence based policy making expert council, and crush the enemy.... Or be crushed and or ousted yourself.
Need ideas for countries. What's a good place I could move to that has decent public transit infrastructure, free healthcare and good welfare/retirement benefits, cheap gigabit internet, and legal cannabis concentrates?
(Last one is most important because I literally cannot sleep without weed; prescription sleeping pills are awful and do not work effectively for me. Also flower is a non-option cause the wife hates the smell and I want to be considerate.)
Japan still has legal CBN (and CBD), at least until the government figures out that people are using it to have fun and bans it. Although health care is cheap but not free.
Australia
Or even just still using English. Most countries use it in some capacity.
If you have an university degree or job that's in high demand even learning a foreign language can be done after you got out. (source: I have a shitload of America friends that came to Europe without speaking anything but English)
We're turning into a lot of little Eichmanns
I hate that term. Eichmann very notably revelled in his role and tried to play up how many people they killed.
I hadn't come across it or heard of Eichmann until just now. It's shitty that it doesn't use a better namesake to represent what it's trying to describe; but that description is one that's absolutely happening. Hence OP's meme.
The vast majority of us, self included, are stuck in that trap; and having a label for that trap is an important step to challenging it.
So... I can 100% understand the opposition to it, but what do you recommend in its stead?
"Mitläufer". A German Term for people who don't revel in their role, don't actively contribute to the suffering, but just "let it run its course".
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