As an outsider (I live in Belgium) it feels very weird and dystopian to see everything happening in American politics with Trump and Musk.
On one side, it’s very interesting and almost entertaining; on the other side, it’s scary. I can’t imagine what it must be like to live in the USA.
Americans, how do you cope? What’s your take on the situation?
I am trying to ignore it. It’s like all the worst fears I could have coming true. The richest man in the world, a naked fascist and virulent transphobe, is gobbling up all the sensitive data the government has and is feeding it to AI so he can tear down the government and usher in techno-feudalism.
Meanwhile, I still have to go to work and pretend that everything is fine and normal, while the government is trying to define trans people out of existence, help Israel ethnically cleanse Palestine, and threaten every ally we’ve had.
I want to leave, but it’s extraordinarily difficult to uproot your life, and there’s no guarantee that finding a viable way to move elsewhere is going to happen.
So I’m just trying to imagine myself a single person, trying to hide from the brutality and eke out a good life with my little resources and community, and pray that whatever happens doesn’t happen to me directly.
Maybe I should be out protesting - I feel like I should - but there isn’t a mass movement right now, and there’s no leverage in government to stop them. So things are feeling pretty bleak right now.
Lookup the 50501 movement. There were protests across the entire country in every single state yesterday and they are planning future ones too. Many of them were quite large especially considering how short notice they were prepared
Here’s one video montage with just handful of some of the protests https://bsky.app/profile/50501movement.bsky.social/post/3lifqkjki2k2o
“a peaceful movement”. Ok. Unilaterally disarming seems like a dubious move to me.
I don’t think protests where you just stand around and chant are especially effective. Maybe in 1950 when seeing people get firehosed was shocking, but the world is different today. Media is captured by the wealthy and most people don’t care.
Protests are a starting point not an ending one. Many of the groups involved in this like Indivisible are also recruiting people from theses protests to do the less flashy work of fighting back in other ways
They also are quite the lighting rod to get people to feel engaged more broadly. If you’ve never gone to a mass protest, it’s hard to describe how they reignite you to fight back. Seeing all those people there makes you realize you are not alone. That you are not the only one who doesn’t think this is okay
These most recent protests were also much larger than the media is describing it. The media is saying thousands nationwide, but there were multiple cities that each had 1000+ people. Many smaller cities had hundreds protesting
glad to see you guys are doing a bit of socialism to fight back.
just wanted to wish you all the best in your endeavours.
This is a good point. Seeing other people get onto the street can motivate people who weren’t feeling enthusiastic.
But I do worry that protests will fizzle out and be, as you say, an ending point. Maybe they won’t be.
Nothing is going to change in a big hurry, no matter what happens, but the efforts great and small that we all make are cumulative over time, so that when observable change happens, it’ll be solid.
You’re enough. What you can do is enough, even if it’s as simple as making some space in your home to be able to accomodate someone who needs safety on short notice, getting involved in mutual aid, printing flyers, being observant and identifying small opportunities to make fascists think twice. Even just getting into a resistance mindset is a positive move.
Everything has risk, of course, and the level of risk you are prepared to take on, for you, is up to you. A teeny tiny bit of risk today might just make you feel that you can take on a bit more tomorrow, and a bit more the day after that.
Do you think government will do anything at all in the coming weeks, months, years? I can’t wrap my head around the situation at all. How does anyone with a slight bit of brains and a small grasp of history just accept this? It’s so dystopian…
There have been people fighting back. They just get 10x less media coverage than all the horrible things going on. This is part of what people mean when they say the revolution will not be televised
Many of their actions have been blocked in many of the federal courts and they are largely complying with those orders
There are many federal workers refusing to go along with all kinds of their action that slow them down
Many blue states and localities have already passed laws/ordinances to stop cooperating with the federal government ICE raid making them more difficult to carry out
The revolution will not be televised.
Where can I find info on the people fighting back. I have found some judges, but the workers and people like that is hard to find in mainstream media.
Democracy Docket is a good source for court battles. They cover all kinds of court cases and the updates on them you hardly find in other media
The other action is harder to find concentrated in one source, but there’s people on various social media that try to signal boost the limited media coverage of that stuff. For instance, Ariella Elm (@ariellaelm.bsky.social), various activism groups like Indivisible, the r/fednews and r/50501 subreddit, etc.
Most people are living paycheck to paycheck, and the US is so big that getting from bumfuck, Arizona to DC is a monumental task. Hell, even getting from bumfuck, NY to Albany NY is impossible for some. It’s all on purpose. Most Americans are barely getting by.
To add to that, half the country wants this
Half the voting country wants this.
Edit: I just checked the polls, maybe you’re right.
My view from across the pond is that is bad enough that 30%ish of the country voted for this - but the 40% of non-voters (let’s knock 10% off for people who are unable to vote through injury, commitments, or mental capacity or whatever) don’t care enough to vote against it.
It leaves 60% of the country who are at least okay with how it’s all working out. Frightening.
That does sound like a fucked up number if you take it at face value. But I have found if you look at historical voting, about 35% are always going to be bat shit crazy on how they vote. Is it not like that where you’re from?
Over 50% of our population reads below a 6th year education and our school system has been steadily defunded and dumbed down over the past 40 years. A large portion of Americans only have 2 brain cells and they’re both busy fighting for 3rd place. Ignorance and a lack of critical thinking skills is what has gotten us into this situation and I don’t know if we have what it takes to get us out of it.
How do we even get out of it? How do you reconcile the fact that Americans live in entirely separate realities to each other? How are we meant to educate and connect to a group of people who demonize education and connection? Like I honestly don’t know what can be done for some of these people short of actual re-education camps, because they need a full mental debriefing.
Don’t forget the 24/7 propaganda networks telling them they should be angry at immigrants and people who are different from them and that only these specific oligarchs are the ones who can save them from the libs.
I’ll steal this one. That’s a marvelous quote
The people that want to rule in the coming dictatorship run the government currently, the GOP holds every lever of power including the federal “police” force and has installed loyal “yes men.” It’s the whole reason you read about “buyouts” to let people resign, it’s so they can all be replaced with people who have to undergo a new loyalty test they’re implementing which apparently ask questions along the lines of “how do you feel the January 6th protestors were treated?” Looking for an answer of “unfairly” or something.
There is no force within the government that isn’t under their control. There are individual judges scattered around the country that can try to stop the worst offences with sternly written letters, but with no method of enforcement, the paper just gets torn and ignored.
The people with “brains” are diseased with the greed virus and have looked to history, seeing that Germany was stopped by force and knowing there is no force that could stop us. There is no stopping fascism when it goes full tilt here in America, there is no outside force that has the capacity to free us. It will somehow have to happen from within and I honestly don’t see that happening with all the new methods of technology driven monitoring and successful propaganda outlets.
… yet! I have some hope in the EU becoming stronger together and try to do something against it. I don’t know what, but something…
It is bleak. Trust me, I’ve been fighting this for ten years. Can’t say it feels good to have been right all along about what Trump is capable of.
But still, fight back, even in small ways. They want us to be too afraid to try anything, that’s been the entire point.