552
CHOOO CHOOOOO MOTHERFUCKERS (lemmy.world)
submitted 7 months ago by to c/politicalmemes@lemmy.world
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[+] -16 points 7 months ago (49 children)

I understand all this of course, but I find it curious Americans seem to think everyone else who has gone on a protest, riot or participate in an actual revolution in history were all comfortable, with a large nest egg and able to stop working for as long as the revolution lasted.

The notion that they may have to actually sacrifice some comfort is completely unreasonable it seems and yet, that is exactly what they constantly accept every single time a politician (usually a Republican but by no means only by Republicans) erodes another right, liberty or opportunity

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  • [–] [S] 57 points 7 months ago (15 children)

    It's not about "sacrificing comfort." It's about literal survival for a lot of people.

    PERSONAL STORIES:

    Example #1: My nephew needed a heart transplant within days of being born. He is on very expensive drugs for the rest of his life. The only reason his family can afford it is because his dad's work pays for really good insurance. His dad is basically a prisoner at work.

    Example #2: I have bipolar disorder. My one medicine is $1,500 a month without insurance. I get suicidal without it. The only reason we can afford to pay is because of my husband's job and related insurance. He is basically a prisoner at work.

    OTHER STORIES - JUST INSULIN:

    • Alec Smith (Age 26, Minnesota, 2017): After turning 26, Alec aged out of his mother’s insurance plan. His monthly insulin costs were estimated at $1,300, prompting him to ration his medication. He was found dead in his apartment from diabetic ketoacidosis (DKA) shortly after.

    • Josh Wilkerson (Age 27, Virginia, 2019): After aging out of his stepfather’s insurance, Josh could not afford the $1,200/month cost for his prescription insulin. He switched to a cheaper over-the-counter version, which was less effective and led to fatal complications.

    • Jesse Sheerer-Radcliffe (Age 21, Minnesota, 2019): Jesse died after rationing his insulin due to the high cost, a case his father highlighted as a "ridiculous", preventable loss.

    • Antavia Lee Worsham (Age 22, Ohio, 2017): Antavia struggled to afford her $1,000/month insulin costs and supplies after turning 18 and losing state coverage, resulting in her death from DKA.

    • Shane Patrick Boyle (Age 48, Arkansas, 2017): A comic book writer who struggled with costs, Shane was $50 short on a GoFundMe campaign for his insulin and died from DKA just days after his mother passed away.

    • Monique Gabriel Moses (Age 26, 2017): After losing her job and insurance, Monique rationed her insulin to make it last, resulting in her death.

    • Jesse Lutgen (Age 32, 2018): After losing his full-time job and insurance, Jesse rationed his insulin, which was later determined to be from a "black market" supply of left-over insulin from a deceased friend.

    Source: https://rightcarealliance.org/activities/insulin/

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  • [+] -44 points 7 months ago (14 children)

    Ok so you'll just hang on to that scrap until they inevitably come for you later on... good plan

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  • [–] 27 points 7 months ago (12 children)

    It's so easy to say things like this when you aren't living the situation. What would you have them do? Die for no reason? There isn't some organized revolution to go join.

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  • [+] -23 points 7 months ago (11 children)

    I have already explained myself plenty... a few hours a week organizing is more than any of them do

    But sure, jump to the absolute extreme of "dying for no reason" so your victim complex is scratched a bit

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  • [–] [S] 21 points 7 months ago (2 children)

    You come off as someone with zero empathy for fellow human beings, especially if they happen to be born in the USA. You do you, I guess.

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  • [–] 7 points 7 months ago (6 children)

    Do you know that none of them organize? Have you considered that the slightest mention of union or strike in many places leads to immediate termination, especially in at-will employment states? Loss of a job means loss of healthcare which means death. I'm not trying to play the victim. I am fortunate to be able to organize with local leftist organizations and my healthcare is secure. Most Americans are not so lucky. It's not some absolute extreme, it happens to people we know and love.

    It's so easy to make the assertions you do. I'd like to see you choose those actions over your child's medication. We don't get a social safety net. If we're fired, it could mean we go into lifelong debt, homelessness, or simply die. Most Americans live paycheck to paycheck. Those who can should organize. Those who cannot should care for their family and immediate community.

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  • [+] -13 points 7 months ago (5 children)

    Do you know that none of them organize?

    I do know... hence my bitching

    Have you considered that the slightest mention of union or strike in many places leads to immediate termination, especially in at-will employment states? Loss of a job means loss of healthcare which means death.

    Already covered... they should not have accepted those conditions but they did... just as they accepting these new, lower conditions. As time goes by it will only get harder.

    Case in point, 11 million of their fellow Americans lost access to health care a few months ago... so yes I understand they must risk something, but they will lose everything anyway if they just sit and wait.

    So, exaggerating as everyone is doing here, if you are kidnapped and the kidnapper assures you there is zero chance he will let you live. Do you fight back? or wait in case the kidnapper changes his mind?

    It’s so easy to make the assertions you do...

    Again, you are just waiting for your turn to slaughter

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  • [–] 6 points 7 months ago (4 children)

    Ah. You're a troll. "Should not have accepted those terms," lol, lmao even.

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  • [–] -5 points 7 months ago (3 children)

    you are the one living in a hellhole and refusing to even recognize it.. I wouldn't laugh so much but I commend you for your humour

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  • [–] 4 points 7 months ago (2 children)

    You... think I don't recognize it? What? I'm a leftist queer woman living in a declining dystopia. I'm laughing at the fact that you think we can just say no to terms that every job has in many areas, especially hourly ones. They keep you working 39.5 hours a week and never let you go "full time" so they don't have to give benefits, or classify you as a contractor, and your only option is paying a portion of your salary for the opportunity to have healthcare you could otherwise never afford. I was forced to stay in a hellhole job for years because I was broke, had nowhere else to go, no better opportunities, had every job application denied because they're mostly fake postings to make the facade of growth hold in our failing economy, all because if I didn't stay in my job I would no longer be able to afford health insurance for a life changing surgery I would otherwise never afford. I couldn't just tell them "no, I won't accept those unfair terms," BECAUSE THEY'RE THE ONLY OPTION. We don't have comprehensive labor laws! Most of us live in wage slavery! Any talk of union or strike would mean the immediate loss of employment, and yet I still organized behind their backs.

    I laugh because someone is looking at a victim of an oppressive regime and saying "not good enough." I laugh because otherwise I'd cry. Recognize your fucking privilege and leave the cynicism at the door. I'm doing everything I can, just like most of us. Even the complacent ones are victims of oligarch controlled media brainwashing, and a culture of exceptionalism and nationalism that keeps us trapped in a bucket of boiling water and thanking the cook for the opportunity.

    I'm scared, I'm angry, and I'm frustrated looking at a culture that thinks a "blue wave" in the midterms will change everything, when our system is irreparably broken. I want to see a general strike. Any attempts to organize one will fail and have failed, because people cannot afford unemployment. All I can do is organize and educate and hope we get some change around healthcare and labor laws before it gets too much for me and I leave.

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  • [–] 0 points 7 months ago (1 child)

    so your way out is doing nothing? waiting until they come for you?

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  • [–] 1 point 7 months ago

    I don't know how you read that entire thing and decided I'm doing nothing. Leave me alone if all you have to offer is cynicism and critique. I am organizing with local leftists organizations. I am not walking out of my job and losing healthcare and employment in the current job market out of pure principle. If there was a nationwide movement that had real momentum I would join it. I am a part of organizations that are trying to organize such things.

    Again, we are not doing nothing. I am doing more than most, but organizing with community, supporting each other, staying politically active, pushing for reform and change at the local, state, and national level, and protesting is not nothing. You cannot actively look at someone who is escaping a burning building with their family and say "well why aren't you in there pulling more people out? You should do more." Surviving and supporting each other is the most many people can do. Strike and active resistance would mean houselessness or lack of healthcare for most people. It simply isn't bad enough to have the support of the general populace yet, they're too brainwashed, and I am not going to throw my life away for an ideal.

    I am doing all I can. Fuck anyone who sits in comfort while a system I was born into and actively detest destroys my life and the lives of people I love and says "not good enough." Do you look at refugees from state violence and say "why didn't you stay and resist? You should have fought back. There are more of you than there are of them." We care for ourselves, our family, and our communities first. We work with the hand we were dealt.

    Your idealism is callous and unrealistic. I do not believe that you would act any differently were you in my shoes. Can you honestly say that you would choose to forego health and/or home in a pointless gesture of resistance against a machine that will not notice or care for your "sacrifice?" Such an action would be selfish and self-serving. I will not deprive my family and loved ones for a meaningless gesture because some people on the Internet think that EVERYTHING listed above is "doing nothing." I have tried to explain, but you clearly have a vested interest in victim blaming over listening.

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  • [–] 7 points 7 months ago

    I have already explained myself plenty

    I missed that part. From here it seems that armchair of yours is kinda comfy. No-no, you sit; tell Americans again how protesting in America should be just like your country. Tell us again of the revolution.

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  • [–] 27 points 7 months ago (29 children)

    You are asking people to choose homelessness. At some point the tide may rise to the point where community support will allow for this, but it's just not there yet. I don't know if it will ever be until it's too late.

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  • [+] -20 points 7 months ago (27 children)

    Ok first of all, if you are 1 day pay cut (so no pay for 1 day so you can strike) from being homeless, the harm is already done and you now get to enjoy the benefits of showing nothing but apathy for the past 2 decades

    Second, of course I do not mean every single person should be able to do this... but your position is that basically NOBODY could strike either which is laughable

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  • [–] 18 points 7 months ago (25 children)

    Dude, I wasn't even in the work force 2 decades ago, I went from high school straight into paycheck-to-paycheck survival mode because I couldn't afford to go to college. I didn't even have a chance, but people like you go online and act like all Americans are lazy assholes who should just fix their country because you don't know what it's like to be locked into wage slavery just to afford the most basic amenities that are provided freely to everyone in your country. If I don't have a job, I lose access to the medication that makes my life bearable and possible, and in order to keep a job I have to sacrifice most of my time and energy for it.

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  • [+] -22 points 7 months ago* (24 children)

    Ok then... hang on to the scraps they have allowed you to have until they take those away... I am sure you'll just go down happy you stretched your misery as much as possible without inconveniencing the regime.

    all Americans are lazy assholes

    lazy no, just apathetic... assholes yes, it if does not affect them personally, they could not care their neighbour suffers... "fuck you, got mine" is the most identifiable American Value

    If I don’t have a job, I lose access to the medication that makes my life bearable and possible, and in order to keep a job I have to sacrifice most of my time and energy for it.

    This regime just kicked around 11 million of people in your situation out of health care... I guess it did not hit you this time so you keep chugging away at your self admitted slavery...

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  • [–] 15 points 7 months ago (11 children)

    Alright, so what should I do to singlehandedly save my whole country? What do you want from me? Do you feel good about yourself that you're arguing with people in worse living conditions than you on the internet? I will quit my job and go out into the streets until a cop shoots me to death for sleeping on a park bench in your name, that will save my country!

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  • [+] -18 points 7 months ago (10 children)

    singlehandedly

    Nothing, do you know what the GENERAL part of General Strike means?

    What do you want from me?

    I would love to America to fuck off... but YOU don't need to do anything for ME... you should be doing this for YOUR FUCKING SELF

    Do you feel good about yourself that you’re arguing with people in worse living conditions than you on the internet?

    LOL OMG the victim complex... this is another American Value

    I will quit my job and go out into the streets until a cop shoots me to death for sleeping on a park bench in your name, that will save my country!

    Maybe be smarter than the Pedophile you elected as president? maybe just spend a few hours a week organizing from the safety of your home?

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  • [–] 11 points 7 months ago (4 children)

    you're talking to individuals, not a public. you do not have that kind of pull.

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  • [+] -10 points 7 months ago (3 children)

    it's a public forum bud... you just felt singled out.

    Maybe if you were a person actually doing something, you would have interpreted my comments as "uff sucks to be them"

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  • [–] 6 points 7 months ago (2 children)

    no i feel a responsibility to stick up for people who have stuck up for me. you legitimately don't know who i am.

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  • [+] -8 points 7 months ago (1 child)

    I do not... but either you felt called out by my comment or "care" about other people who are doing exactly as I am assuming.

    If you feel such camaraderie with them, what did you do for the 11 million people that were kicked out of Health Care by your rapist president a few months ago?

    Come on, shut me up and show me the good stuff

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  • [–] 4 points 7 months ago (4 children)

    I work every day to lay the groundwork for a general strike.

    I speak to everyone I can about it.

    I have convinced maybe 3 people and I have about 150 million workers left to go.

    But let's be more realistic. Maybe 30 million are already convinced. Only 120 million people left to talk to.

    I'll update you when I've spoken with everybody.

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  • [+] -7 points 7 months ago* (3 children)

    LOL when just talking to other people seems too much for you that you push it sarcastically

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  • [–] 3 points 7 months ago (2 children)

    I wish I wasn't serious. It's not sarcasm when it's the bald face truth.

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  • [+] -7 points 7 months ago (1 child)

    Ok seriously, have you actually talked to people into taking any action? any, as in "stop buying from big corpo as much as possible" or "stop using Meta, Xitter, etc"

    Even writing to your corrupt Senator/Governor works something because it piles on the evidence of dislike.

    If so, you are already doing something and, while you alone won't change the world, you are contributing

    Notice I am not (and never were) asking people to set themselves on fire on the Capitol stairs or sacrifice their first born, those are the exaggerations people point to simply to pretend there is no hope and since there is nothing they can do, they might as well actually do nothing.

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  • [–] 3 points 7 months ago

    I appreciate your recognition of our humanity.

    You are correct to point out that change cannot be forced without some sacrifice. Our forbearerers camped out for years in West Virginia, lived in tents in the mountains as striking coal miners, and endured gunfights and ultimately machine gun fire and bombs in the Battle of Blair Mountain.

    They lost the battle.

    But they scared power and within a generation reforms like the weekend and the 8 hour workday were passed into law. Thank you coal miners and the United Miners Association that supported them with union dues.

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  • [–] 10 points 7 months ago (5 children)

    Jesus fucking christ, dude. Get some perspective, or shut the fuck up. They don't "got theirs," and choosing to "help" is quick suicide for no gain.

    Honestly, it's disgusting to watch someone like you parade some absurd moral high ground while having absolutely no grasp on the lives others are living.

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  • [+] -10 points 7 months ago (4 children)

    They don’t “got theirs,” and choosing to “help” is quick suicide for no gain.

    so they'll just wait their turn to lose health care on the next big beautiful tax cut for the rich?

    I honestly couldn't care less about them... if Americans do not care about themselves, what do I care.

    The reason I am upset is because their actions (or lack thereof) is causing the World tons of pain... they are afraid of losing their jobs? how about the 150 Iranian little girls they just slaughtered just because their pedophile president doesn't want people asking about his kiddy diddling days?...

    Honestly, it’s disgusting to watch someone like you parade some absurd moral high ground while having absolutely no grasp on the lives others are living.

    The stop the pearl clutching and block me... you are choosing to engage with me

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  • [–] 8 points 7 months ago (3 children)

    I am choosing to tell you the fuck off. Don't mistake this for an exchange of ideals. You are behaving in a disgusting fashion, and you need to be told. I respect that it comes from a good place, because we ultimately want the same thing, but to treat people who already feel powerless as morally bankrupt is beyond absurd.

    You are kicking the powerless while they are down, because you don't like the outcome. Get some perspective.

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  • [+] -6 points 7 months ago (2 children)

    I am choosing to tell you the fuck off

    Same as I have chosen to tell Americans to take action and undo some of the damage they have caused themselves and the world

    Don’t mistake this for an exchange of ideals.

    Neither you, nor I, have discussed ideals so no worries

    You are behaving in a disgusting fashion, and you need to be told. I respect that it comes from a good place, because we ultimately want the same thing, but to treat people who already feel powerless as morally bankrupt is beyond absurd.

    When someone cares more about their job than the fact their country is slaughtering hundreds of people around the world and currently, actively starving the people of Cuba for no reason other than their Pedophile president wants to hide his kiddy fiddling activities... are they not, just a bit, morally bankrupt?

    You are kicking the powerless while they are down, because you don’t like the outcome. Get some perspective.

    WOW... if the American people are powerless... what do you call the Iranian children killed in school?

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  • [–] 3 points 7 months ago (1 child)

    This isn't a competition of who is a bigger victim. People are suffering in both halves of the world, and you're here telling American's they should be killing themselves in protest because their president is out there committing war crimes. The irony of your self-righteous attitude, as you sit here projecting your pearl-clutching sense of moral rightness onto others who are just struggling to keep breathing, is fucking insane.

    America is not my country. I just don't let bullies spew shit without being told. Do yourself and the rest of the world a favor, and reflect on the things you say.

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  • [–] -3 points 7 months ago

    and you’re here telling American’s they should be killing themselves in protest

    Literally I am not. That is the exaggeration they jump to to pretend they have no choice.

    Multiple times I said that a few hours a week of communicating with like minded people or actual organizations that are moving against the push for fascism would go a long way... no self immolating, no dying, no starving.

    The thing is most people would not even consider stop using Xitter or Facebook as a form of protest... that is too much to ask of them apparently

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  • [–] 10 points 7 months ago (5 children)

    There's a lot of fucking problems in the world. For someone so vocal about what others should be doing, what the fuck are YOU doing about all the problems?

    If you have time to post drivel on lemmy, maybe you have time to go make a change in the world.

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  • [+] -15 points 7 months ago (4 children)

    I can multi task, you know?

    But seriously, how lame is this reply of yours? my country is not speed running towards fascism, yours is.

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  • [–] 9 points 7 months ago (3 children)

    And we're fighting it, no thanks to people like you who only attack us.

    But good to know you're in a country with no problems whatsoever. So you can sit on your lazy ass and let all the problems keep on happening because they don't impact you personally.

    Sure, keep telling me the type of person you are.

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  • [+] -8 points 7 months ago (2 children)

    And we’re fighting it

    Are you?

    no thanks to people like you who only attack us.

    I owe you nothing bud... this is your country... my only involvement is because we keep getting splashed from the dumpster fire you have going on

    But good to know you’re in a country with no problems whatsoever.

    Never claimed that, very poor strawman

    So you can sit on your lazy ass and let all the problems keep on happening because they don’t impact you personally.

    You know nothing about me or what I do... and it does impact me personally (read dumpster fire comment a few lines above)... but even if it did not, I am not American so I do care what happens to others

    Grow up dude

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  • [–] 1 point 7 months ago

    Can't say I really disagree. As an older person with a lot at stake it's just not bad enough to make the risk worth it (times several million). It is the younger generation that will have to stand up, but I fear they don't have enough good jobs to make striking effective. I don't think civil rights style peaceful protest is going to work this time, either. Revolution is brewing and just waiting for the scales to get tipped a bit too far.

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  • [–] 8 points 7 months ago (1 child)

    Another large issue is that America is so large that it is not very feasible for Americans to just go on a 1-3 day road trip to DC to protest/riot/whatever else. They leave the friend and family network that could support them the most at home. Protests in local cities can do work, but it is more impactful if the lawmakers responsible are personally impacted in DC imo

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  • [+] -13 points 7 months ago

    For a General strike, all that is required is that they do not go to work... they can do that from wherever they are.

    You guys love to make up the most ridiculous excuses... who from Minnesota flew to Washington to complain about ICE?! nobody!, you do that were you live

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