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[–] 228 points 7 months ago (88 children)

So, hey, Americans, your president is openly threatening genocide. You might uh, want to do something about that. Just a thought.

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  • [–] 102 points 7 months ago (46 children)

    Open to suggestions.

    I don't think any of y'all know how well protected this asshole is

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

    It's mind boggling to me there have been no riots by this point.

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  • [+] 36 points 7 months ago (3 children)
  • [–] 33 points 7 months ago

    You’re not wrong about the conditions that historically lead to unrest, material desperation, fear, and breakdown of basic stability tend to be the tipping points. The U.S. government isn’t there for most citizens, and that’s not accidental.

    But what’s worth pointing out is that this “just stable enough” environment didn’t emerge naturally, it’s been actively managed over decades. And a strong case can be made that this is less about general governance and more about a long-term political strategy, particularly on the Republican side.

    You’ve had a pattern where social safety nets are publicly criticized, underfunded, or slowly eroded but rarely eliminated outright. Why? Because removing them completely would create exactly the kind of instability you’re describing. Instead, they’re kept barely functional. Enough to prevent collapse, not enough to meaningfully improve mobility or reduce inequality.

    At the same time, there’s been consistent resistance to policies that would shift people from “barely stable” to genuinely secure, things like stronger labor protections, universal healthcare, or aggressive wage growth. That keeps a large portion of the population economically stressed, but not desperate enough to unify or revolt. It fragments people using base animal instincts, keeps them focused on short-term survival, and limits collective action.

    Add in cultural and political polarization, and it further diffuses pressure. People incorrectly channel frustration horizontally, at each other, instead of vertically at faceless institutions.

    So yes, you’re right about the threshold for unrest. The uncomfortable part is recognizing that a lot of political strategy has been about keeping the country just below that threshold, stable enough to barely function, and strained enough to control.

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  • [–] 7 points 7 months ago*

    It's understandable that not everyone wants to riot for moral values and against mass corruption, but surely everyone can see that it's just a matter of time before distress comes to the USA if nothing is done right now? It's pretty naive to assume that your new enemies won't hit back in some way, and most of the world just wants the US to become a meaningless country, since everyone is sick of the constant abuse of power and its negative effects on the world economy and stability. To join riots right now is the least the American people can do. Throughout American history it was often needed for the many to fight the elite and that time has come again.

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

    Seriously, there seems to be this delusion that we all just have magic buttons that execute our politicians on a whim. What the fuck do you expect us to do, specifically, to fix this?

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

    In pretty much every other western country, the populace could reasonably exert force over their national armed forces because those armed forces are reasonably sized. But the entire active duty military of Germany has fewer personnel than the on-base population of a single US military base (JBLM 210k, Germany 185k), and JBLM is only the 4th largest base in the US....

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

    For me, it is more that I have a partner whom I love with every fiber of my being and a 5 yr old that is my whole universe. My family needs me. It's not so black and white as you make it. I work all the time to make sure we have money to barely get by.

    I will say, if a "rebellion" starts and we actually have a working "army" I'd gladly be apart of it... But just going out and starting shit? I'm sorry I can't. I can spread the word, I can tell everyone about what's going on and do my best to make sure the people in my town know what a monster he is.

    Sometimes it feels like y'all think we Americans all live the same lives and have the same problems. That just not true. They have is hogtied and pinned down. How do I go and fight when fighting means my family will suffer?

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  • [–] 21 points 7 months ago

    That's how I feel. I've got three small kids and a handicapped wife. Getting myself killed or arrested isn't an option. When there's a tipping point, I'll be on the right side of it. If there's a way to get to that tipping point faster, I'll do that too. But sacrificing myself and my family just so I can tell some internet tough guys that political ideals were more important to me than my ethical ideals? That's dumb.

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  • [–] 26 points 7 months ago

    Mate, I imagine we've all thought that, but there's a big gap between thinking it and doing it, and from where I'm sitting it appears you're the exact kind of internet tough guy you're speaking out against.

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

    Not to mention, our military budget is more than the GDP of 85% of the countries in the world, and it's only getting bigger. The proposed budget for next year is more than 90% of the world's countries' GDP. Think about that for a few minutes.

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

    Dude the USA just de facto surrendered to Iran.

    I don't think those ludicrous amounts of money that corporations embezzle via the military is at all representative of it's quality.

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

    I'll accept my share of the blame for not being an active insurgent against the US government as long as we're also holding Russian and Chinese people to the same standard - failing to thwart genocide(s) by a powerful authoritarian regime while under 21st century surveillance and brutal working conditions. Sure I'm disappointed in all of us who aren't part of a resistance, but let's be realistic.

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

    I’m going to be honest: you just sound ignorant and disconnected from the reality of the United States as a politically entity.

    Exception and exceptional share a root word. They do not mean the same thing.

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  • [–] 12 points 7 months ago

    You wrote exactly that delusion into your constitution. The only reason you still have guns after everybody else realised they were bad was so that you could use them to overthrow some mythical tyrannical government.

    Now the tyrannical government is here. Use your guns you love so much. Overthrow it.

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  • [–] 14 points 7 months ago

    Jesus tap dancing Christ, man… It’s an illusion to make people believe they’ll always have the power to stand up. It clearly works, considering you’re quoting it and blaming the average citizens fighting back and going unnoticed because you couldn’t find the time to realize they’re trying to barely scrape by themselves. Blame the leaders who have a face, not the average citizen who’s actually protesting. Not everyone can light themselves on fire in public protests to appease you.

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  • [–] 12 points 7 months ago

    It was always bullshit the joke used to be they would be helpless and guns useless against a corrupt government. And as we learned it was always projection they want to be the corrupt government.

    Everyone's to broke to travel and it takes 8 hours to drive across Nebraska

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  • [–] 8 points 7 months ago*

    Work together with independents and disenfranchised republicans to primary 75+% of the democratic party over the next 4 years.

    The GOP and the DNC are the sword and shield of the wealthy elites respectively.

    Not a short term solution, but the best time to plant a tree is 10 years ago. 2nd best time is today.

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

    U.S. government policy has not even closely reflected the will of the people since 1980, at the latest. Instead, the Overton Window kept moving right, and ever-more neoliberal, until we got to a point at which our only choices were between a grifter with populist energy, and a candidate offering a clearance-bin version of the "HOPE" that turned out to be more neoliberal ratfucking back when an effective salesman had pitched it to us.

    And, no surprise, tons of people checked out of a political process which offered no meaningful response to their day-to-day life of getting economically ratfucked, because it just drained their energy for no discernable benefit.

    So... you asked.

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

    Well it's good you acknowledge all the things you cant do.

    What about the things you can?

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  • [–] 12 points 7 months ago

    What do you suggest? I take pretty extreme "voting with your dollars" positions that have excluded me from a ton of social and family things. I have protested, taken days off work, marched, signed petitions. I've donated to progressive politicians, I've talked about what's going on to apathetic people to the point where they don't talk to me much anymore or ask to stop talking politics. Everything I've voted for has pretty much passed, and my representatives do the right things for the most part. I actively participate in a local network of people connecting resources to protect immigrants by hosting some services on my self-hosted network for people to organize on (I have personally sponsored meshtastic communicators and provided access to an anti-ice private channel).

    I'm pretty tired of doing what feels like a huge amount of effort, only to be told I should be doing something different or more. I fought so hard against the right, that the flanking snark attacks from the left and the implication that I'm somehow complicit by not doing enough or the right thing are driving me towards apathy. I'm fucking exhausted.

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  • [–] 12 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (6 children)

    The US has been openly genociding trans people within its borders and no one cares. People turned out for Palestine and Venezuela to the extent that the state allowed them to, but have been seemingly silent on Cuba. Genocide is as American as the Kardashians.

    To be clear, I'm not talking about politically savvy users on Lemmy. You're not the problem. The problem is the "white moderate" that MLK talked about in his letter. The problem is the apoliticals who complain about having to take the scenic route to Starbucks because of protesters on the streets. It's the so-called "adults" who treat politics like an optional sport. It's the people who have never heard of AIPAC, and who act surprised to learn that the US is at war. Those people need a good wake up slap.

    The cultists are too far gone, the only hope for them to rejoin civilized society is literal cult deprogramming

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

    Look, I agree with every one of your other points, but to say that "the US has been openly genociding trans people" is ludicrously stupid. Yes, some of the states are making anti-bathroom laws, and some of the states are making laws about not allowing medical/therapeutic support to minors for transitioning, and the federal government is making anti-trans executive orders about colleges... but genocide? Seriously?

    Don't water down the use of the word genocide. It's a very serious thing that is currently happening and supported by the US, but that is not what is happening with trans people. Yet. It might happen with the way things are going, but not yet.

    Most people on here gave Jewish pundits shit for calling 700 Jewish deaths in the October attack another "holocaust" and "genocide." We give those same people shit for not calling 70,000 Palestinian deaths a genocide. Don't be like those people.

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  • [–] 7 points 7 months ago

    There's literally one window with a large X in the top right. NPR and Wikipedia do the same thing. But here, I copied the first three paragraphs for you so you don't have an excuse.

    The Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention and Human Security is releasing this third Red Flag Alert for the USA related to the Trump Administration’s anti-trans initiatives, which have continued to expand nationwide since our last Red Flag Alert (RFA) on this subject. Over the eight months since the second RFA’s publication, the Republican Party’s anti-trans agenda has radicalized and continued to intensify. 2025 was the sixth consecutive record-breaking year for the number of anti-trans bills considered across the country. There was a 45 percent increase in bills between 2024 and 2025. Between 2021 and 2025, the number of bills in consideration has increased by 668 percent.

    The Administration has moved from identifying transgender people as a threat to the family and to the nation’s military prowess to claiming that transgender people constitute a cosmic threat to the spiritual health of the nation and the greatest direct threat to U.S. national security in the world. Given these ideological developments, especially coupled with the increasingly hostile and draconian legislation against trans identities, the Lemkin Institute believes that the United States is squarely within the early to middle stages of a genocidal process against trans people, the goal of which is to completely erase transgender people not only from public life but also from existence in the U.S. and globally.

    Genocide against trans people takes on patterns that set it apart from the mass murder genocides that people commonly associate with the crime, such as the Holocaust. Currently, the genocide against trans people follows a pattern – denial of identity (pattern #9 in the Lemkin Institute’s Ten Patterns of Genocide) – that makes it more familiar to the colonial genocides against indigenous populations, including the residential/boarding school systems in North America and Australia, where indigenous children were “allowed” to go on living if they gave up their identities, including their languages. Denial of identity involves two main steps: preventing people from openly expressing an identity and destroying institutions that reproduce the identity. Given that the denial of identity is the consequence of a well-defined hostility, even hatred, for the identity, the pattern is often characterized by incitement against the group. Alongside suppression and incitement, perpetrators of this pattern of genocide will simultaneously criminalize the identity, so that expressions of it or institutions that reproduce it become characterized as threatening and corrosive to the body politic and warranting state violence and coercion. People who assert or support the denied identity then become criminal elements that must be eliminated. In the case of the boarding schools, children who used their mother tongue or otherwise showed signs of their independent identity were severely punished.

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

    Our demented puppet President has powerful people propping him up. Would be mighty helpful if Germans did something about Thiel, and South Africans did something about Musk. Australians, you good with handling Murdoch? Okay, let's go.

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