It bears mentioning that the large scale protests you see in other parts of the world are often in places where there are strong worker protection laws.
In the US almost every single person is literally one major medical incident away from living in their car, one missed mortgage payment away from living in their car, and one missed insurance payment from not getting the medicine they literally need to survive. Most US states allow an employer to fire one of their employees without any warning or cause whatsoever, so long as the reason for the termination doesn’t fit into one of several small boxes…which they would need to admit for it to be actionable, anyway.
My point being, a big part of the reason why you don’t see protests like you do in say, France, is that unlike France, the people here are largely wage slaves that cannot afford to even miss work when suffering from extreme illness, let alone to take to the streets over that asshole pedophile acting like an asshole pedophile. This has been by design.
Don’t mistake a population of people spending all their energy holding onto the little they have for one that supports this regime. Whether you think their action or lack of action is justifiable, you need to at least admit it’s understandable.
I think it’s worth noting that the US is something like 330 million spread out over a large geographic area. There are mass protests happening, and they’re big, the last was millions of people. But you’re not going to see it everywhere simply due to a mix of demographics and geographic distance.
By contrast, France has something like ~65 million people in a region that is the size of Texas, one of our 50 states. You could fit France spatially into the US something like 20 times. You couldn’t miss their protests if you wanted to, even if it were done by less than a 10th of their population.
Exactly, it’s like people are so caught up in the methodology of this that every conversation I see about it seems to wooosh the actual point of protesting lol
Well, that and also people in France can take public transportation to cross the country quite easily. In the US, most people can’y even get groceries without a personal vehicle.
Not saying it’s an excuse, they’ve gotta figure this out because holy fuck, but yea. Deeply unserious country.
Literally, there was a massive fire near here at the sole grocery store for like a 5 mile radius and it got to the point where the county had to step in and provide a grant for free ubers and shit while the store was being rebuilt because there was no realistic alternative mode of transportation…the other stores weren’t on bus lines and to boot it was high summer, like 90°F and 90% humidity out…the city had already had to roll out cooling centers because seniors were getting heatstroke due to their AC being busted, there was no way they were walking or biking 5 miles for groceries in that or they’d have been dead on the side of the road.
It makes more sense to a European to think of the US less as a country and more as basically the EU. We’re not a monolithic people from coast to coast. Decrying a lack of broad action across the US is like expecting broad, coordinated action in Spain, Netherlands, Sweden, Poland, Romania and Austria. We’re bound by the same federal laws, but the laws on a state to state basis, literally all laws not explicitly granted to the Federal Government, belong to the states.
The difference between Wyoming and Massachusetts might as well be the difference between Finland and Croatia. Culturally, economically, geographically, different climate, different racial makeup, different religious persuasions…the farther you get from one state, the more different things become…take someone from the upper midwest and have them talk to someone that grew up deep in Southern Louisiana. They’re both speaking English but watch how difficult it is for them to communicate. These are both people that hail from the same country. And that’s even ignoring the fact that there are much higher concentrations of people here who don’t speak even like, emergency English then even countries where English isn’t their mother tongue. Go watch some police bodycam videos and see how often entire extended families have like a token 12 year old that can speak english fluently that is basically speaking for the whole family when the cops are initially rolling up to the scene.
I guess with all that Im just trying to say…people need to ease up on throwing shade at the people of the US as if we are complicit in this because we’re using all our energy to keep our heads above water. This scenario is literally unprecedented in this country, there has never been a time when a single branch of government so effectively demolished the checks and balances that were designed to prevent it from happening. We literally have a domestic military force with as much firepower and resources as the actual military in the form of ICE, the FBI, the police, the National Guard, Homeland Security…little different situation then a bunch of beat cops with batons and riot gear standing at the end of the street to make sure that the protest doesn’t spill over into traffic.
It’s not as simple as people are making it out to be.
thank you. im sick of being beaten down verbally by people who have no fucking idea what life is like here. it’s hell warmed over and i would love to be able to leave.
It bears mentioning that the large scale protests you see in other parts of the world are often in places where there are strong worker protection laws.
In the US almost every single person is literally one major medical incident away from living in their car, one missed mortgage payment away from living in their car, and one missed insurance payment from not getting the medicine they literally need to survive. Most US states allow an employer to fire one of their employees without any warning or cause whatsoever, so long as the reason for the termination doesn’t fit into one of several small boxes…which they would need to admit for it to be actionable, anyway.
My point being, a big part of the reason why you don’t see protests like you do in say, France, is that unlike France, the people here are largely wage slaves that cannot afford to even miss work when suffering from extreme illness, let alone to take to the streets over that asshole pedophile acting like an asshole pedophile. This has been by design.
Don’t mistake a population of people spending all their energy holding onto the little they have for one that supports this regime. Whether you think their action or lack of action is justifiable, you need to at least admit it’s understandable.
Wage slaves have FEWER excuses for refusing to riot, not more.
I think it’s worth noting that the US is something like 330 million spread out over a large geographic area. There are mass protests happening, and they’re big, the last was millions of people. But you’re not going to see it everywhere simply due to a mix of demographics and geographic distance.
By contrast, France has something like ~65 million people in a region that is the size of Texas, one of our 50 states. You could fit France spatially into the US something like 20 times. You couldn’t miss their protests if you wanted to, even if it were done by less than a 10th of their population.
It’s almost as if the US had grown specifically to deter workers’ resistance
Exactly, it’s like people are so caught up in the methodology of this that every conversation I see about it seems to wooosh the actual point of protesting lol
Well, that and also people in France can take public transportation to cross the country quite easily. In the US, most people can’y even get groceries without a personal vehicle.
Not saying it’s an excuse, they’ve gotta figure this out because holy fuck, but yea. Deeply unserious country.
Literally, there was a massive fire near here at the sole grocery store for like a 5 mile radius and it got to the point where the county had to step in and provide a grant for free ubers and shit while the store was being rebuilt because there was no realistic alternative mode of transportation…the other stores weren’t on bus lines and to boot it was high summer, like 90°F and 90% humidity out…the city had already had to roll out cooling centers because seniors were getting heatstroke due to their AC being busted, there was no way they were walking or biking 5 miles for groceries in that or they’d have been dead on the side of the road.
It makes more sense to a European to think of the US less as a country and more as basically the EU. We’re not a monolithic people from coast to coast. Decrying a lack of broad action across the US is like expecting broad, coordinated action in Spain, Netherlands, Sweden, Poland, Romania and Austria. We’re bound by the same federal laws, but the laws on a state to state basis, literally all laws not explicitly granted to the Federal Government, belong to the states.
The difference between Wyoming and Massachusetts might as well be the difference between Finland and Croatia. Culturally, economically, geographically, different climate, different racial makeup, different religious persuasions…the farther you get from one state, the more different things become…take someone from the upper midwest and have them talk to someone that grew up deep in Southern Louisiana. They’re both speaking English but watch how difficult it is for them to communicate. These are both people that hail from the same country. And that’s even ignoring the fact that there are much higher concentrations of people here who don’t speak even like, emergency English then even countries where English isn’t their mother tongue. Go watch some police bodycam videos and see how often entire extended families have like a token 12 year old that can speak english fluently that is basically speaking for the whole family when the cops are initially rolling up to the scene.
I guess with all that Im just trying to say…people need to ease up on throwing shade at the people of the US as if we are complicit in this because we’re using all our energy to keep our heads above water. This scenario is literally unprecedented in this country, there has never been a time when a single branch of government so effectively demolished the checks and balances that were designed to prevent it from happening. We literally have a domestic military force with as much firepower and resources as the actual military in the form of ICE, the FBI, the police, the National Guard, Homeland Security…little different situation then a bunch of beat cops with batons and riot gear standing at the end of the street to make sure that the protest doesn’t spill over into traffic.
It’s not as simple as people are making it out to be.
thank you. im sick of being beaten down verbally by people who have no fucking idea what life is like here. it’s hell warmed over and i would love to be able to leave.
Croatia mentioned :D
Seriously tho, good points. We need to stop throwing shade at each other and replace that with support for each other.