The ICE kidnappings weren't enough. That was the base threshold in my mind. If masked agents grabbing people from your neighborhood isn't enough to get people rioting, then nothing will. As it stands people are "fighting back" in some areas but that mainly amounts to taking to the streets and herding the agents away... then going back to whatever they were doing before.

People older than me would have said prosecuting/rioting against George W. Bush was the last chance off. Folks older than them would point to Nixon. Folks older than that may point to how we let the Confederate insurrectionist states off wayyy too lightly after the war.

Nothing's going to be "enough" because USAmericans don't have the energy in them to fight back. Nothing will make them say "enough" because there is no bite to give. The oligarchs know this. The main politicians who aren't shunned from all the in-groups (so not the progressives or Q folks) -- they all know this.

We are sick and terrified, bound to our lives through a mix of tragic optimism and fear of losing what little we have. The once-middle class cling to their ever-harder lives because they're afraid of drowning in debt; The poor tread water through debt because they're afraid of homelessness; The homeless persevere for fear of jail and death and being disappeared to camps.

We're being played. Every day we push forward to be herded like cattle -- worse than cattle, because the system doesn't care about our health. We keep holding steady pushing through it all and trying to cling to hope of a better future that is clearly never coming. Every two years those on the left been promised a "blue wave" while Dems won't even stop us getting prosecuted for Marijuana; and those on the right are promised a resurgence to some Great America that only ever existed for most straight white men, and which was created through the suppression of the same businesses that are selling them this lie.

This is all Gloom and Doom because I don't see a way out of this. They've got us in a bind that I don't think we can escape, even with the full cooperation of all the working class (which itself is just inconceivable). There's some fundamental weakness of human nature and strength in our systems that got us here, and keep us here.