Not sure what the point is here exactly. Every single country that has ever had a revolution had to deal with these things.
The point is that if you convince yourself there’s no chance of succeeding, then maybe you won’t feel so guilty about not even trying.
Yes let’s downplay the US military like it’s just any other. No biggie
the military is what the ghandi trap is for. one doesn’t defeat them in combat, we be brutalized by them publicly in a way that radicalizes enough of the remaining population that they have to kill everyone in order to prevent the revolution.
so in order for it to work you have to lay the groundwork beforehand teaching people how to have empathy for the victims of systematic violence. in which your enemy isn’t the military but propogandists.
I remember some guy from history saying something along the lines of “turn the other cheek”, if only I could remember who that was and what happened to them and if they achieved any sort of meaningful impact on society.
Don’t think that was Ghandi but it was definitely a winning strategy in gaining India’s independence.
however, as a counter point to that comic:
Yeah my point was rather that “we can conquer with peace” is a few thousand years old, at least. Jesus, Gandhi, all of them.
And exactly because it was working, they got killed. Little men in power got scared.
Edit Also I don’t really understand what I’m looking at. Fallout 3 pipe gun prop? Prolly a diy gun. But in the US lots of those rely on parts that are free to buy. Making a pipe shotgun isn’t too challenging… but something like a repeating pistol? That’s a bit more work.
that’s valid. I would like to propose that the ghandi trap and conquering with peace are a useful technique among many that we must use. like, it’s specifically for militant violence like those individuals were facing but it’s countered with proganda like the past three decades of fox News has produced.
so sometimes ducktape Shinzo Abe guns are necessary too, so is deradicalizing the old-heads, and building coalitions like the NAACP
edit: shit, yeah I should explain. that’s the gun that was used to kill Shinzo Abe, former nationalist PM of Japan
You forgot to mention Abe’s enabling of the Moonies cult, who exploited the assassin’s mother. After that made headlines, opinions on Abe shifted and started actions to address the issue (dissolution, looking into corruption etc).
shit, yeah I should explain. that’s the gun that was used to kill Shinzo Ab
Aah. That makes sense.
Yeah pacifism should be a priority but it isn’t always the answer. Like it would not have been the right choice for Jews in WWII, it wouldn’t have been the right choice in Rwanda or Cambodia, and it doesn’t really work in Gaza either.
Sometimes violent resistance is necessary, yes, but for developed counties which still use the pretense of civility, at least that can be broken if nothing else. If peaceful protests are mowed down with military force, it strips all pretense of acting like a democracy.
That’s probably why it’s so hard for Chinese people to see any mentions of a certain place with a name that has a geometrical shape in it. I went to check the Wikipedia page for it and holy shit any mention of anything bad having happened there is pushed down to a subheading of a subheading, and afforded a whole three sentences. There’s obviously a specific article on Wikipedia addressing that, but that being pushed so far down on the main article is clearly China’s doing.
But seeing as the US doesn’t (yet) have such extensive censorship, now would be the time to loudly and non-violently protest before they manage to set up systems which can censor any government violence used to put down peaceful protestors. Afterwards it won’t matter and it’s going to require something more like firebombs and guerilla warfare.
yes, that’s why most revolutions result in dictators.
Yes and they had cooperation and a plan and the US population does not have either.
Given how messy many revolutions were, i don’t think that to have been the case most of the time.
The plan doesn’t have to be complex and e.g. the cuban revolution wouldn’t have been possible without widespread support from people. Also, relatively un-bloody, comparatively, btw https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuban_Revolution single digit thousands on both sides? Bloody enough that everyone probably knows someone affected by two or three degrees separation, but besides that?
And before all, who is willing to intentionally miss (perhaps forever) the remaining episodes of their favorite show to make that all happen?
I don’t think they’re making any more episodes of Firefly
Turns out they could take the sky from us. 😞
Hey you’re here at least - they couldn’t stop the signal.
Until they kill me with a sword. How weird would that be?
Must you upset me so?
Yeah. We can’t even get people to agree to stop using social media networks that spread misinformation and fund the worst elements in society. You can’t even SUGGEST it to them without being met with angry, ignorant, defensive nonsense. If we can’t even manage that, how are we going to convince them to risk everything on revolution? I think we’ve Brave New World’d too hard - the old rules do not apply.
I don’t know what the answer is. But the problem is clear.
i’m kinda hoping that social media gets less interesting over time to many people. the reason why everybody spent 15 hours a day in front of their smartphone for the last 2 decades was mostly because of the novelty of it all. once we’ve seen it all, it’s less interesting and people will stop using it so much.
I’d like to think so too, but there’s a whole generation growing up without anything else in their reference frame to switch to - this IS their lives. It’s easy for old farts like me to change to something else - we had a couple decades BEFORE the internet.
oh at some point smartphones were new and unfamiliar, and still they captured people’s attention. this means that something else can capture people’s attention as well, in the future.
Kurzeghast(sp) has a great little video that ends with essentially “there is literally nothing stopping us from having a better healthy post scarcity society but ourselves. There is no reason for it except for the mindset that perpetuates that we can’t”
There are also lots and lots of guns wielded by lots of misguided poor people being paid by very rich people who have nearly infinite resources at their disposal.
I’m not saying the conclusion is wrong - but it’s not easy either.
Strap up
*****🔫
“Kurzgesagt” is German for “briefly put.”
How about “curtly said”?
Curtness is not implied here.
It certainly is. “Curt” and “brief” are synonymous, at least in some definitions. Curt has an implication of rudeness but that is not strictly so.
It would be simpler to avoid the implication by using a more apt term.
“In short” would be another less-incorrect translation, but I think “briefly put” is more elegant in conveying the tone of the message.
Well, I think they subtitle it “in a nutshell” which is also more elegant but less literal.
Translation does not require literalness. That’s arguably the most elegant given the apt idiom.
I think the English channel used to be called “in a nutshell”
No, the English Channel used to be called “Oceanus Britannicus”
Yeah I knew I would butcher it
There is no reason for it except for the mindset that perpetuates that we can’t
Theoretically every human could just cooperate too, but that’s not how humans work. Humans are animals and a lot of society exists to suppress and channel animal behaviours.
We should try, bit by bit, to get to a post-scarcity society, but we should also acknowledge it’s going to be hard and take a long time.
I mean I agree. Point is, the mindset that it is impossible is the hurdle
I fail to see what that has to do with a violent uprising.
Not to mention, “how is someone supposed to organize any of this without getting disappeared by the FBI or CIA.”
Easy. Get disappeared by ICE instead.
Most of the people here live paycheck to paycheck and can’t afford a $500 emergency.
So the risk of even just getting arrested, and held in custody for a week, would be enough to ruin one’s life.
That puts a damper on protesting, until you or your family are directly impacted. It also inhibits willingness to strike.
And it also explains why so many protesters are of retirement age – they don’t have a job to lose if they miss work unexpectedly for a few days.
In a lot of ways, we were already conquered.
Ultimately the same for all other authoritarian states with a “docile” population. Fragile living conditions threaten their livelyhoods, preventing many from joining the fight.
Until those fragile living conditions are threatened. Then people will think “I’m fucked if I do nothing and might not be fucked if I do something. So I will do something.”
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I disagree that ‘comfort’ was a cause. That line of thinking comes from the same puritanical austerity narrative that has been used to tell the working class that our circumstances are due to poor character rather than because we were talked out of demanding more.
It’s victim-blamey, but like all victim-blaming narratives it has the virtue of restoring a sense of control, a sense of “this is the thing that I can decide to do that would have prevented this.”
…which isn’t to say that I don’t think we can’t identify things that could have stopped this. But I don’t think a vague assertion that people here are more distracted or ‘comfortable’ than elsewhere helps. Also - a lot of people are not comfortable. But they may deal with that by at least enjoying the distractions or not staring into the sun of things they don’t think they can change.
Ultimately, we ended up here through corrupt systems. The Trumpers were right to want to ‘drain the swamp’, they are just so blinded by antimosity that they fell for a grifter because he promised to hurt people.
All the pillars of democracy have been under attack since Reagan - high quality journalism and education to maintain an informed voter base, a voter base with enough time to research issues, and political campaign laws to keep government working in the public’s interest.
Occupy Wall Street tried to sound the alarm, but journalism was already too corrupt and the movement was successfully sold to the public as ‘annoying college kids demanding free things’.
So now we have a significant chunk of the voter base that doesn’t know what habeas corpus is, or anything about how our checks and balances are supposed to look, and thinks what makes this country “a free country” is that we blow shit up with fireworks on July 4th - and doesn’t see why authoritarianism would be so bad.
And the rest of us who are looking on aghast are honestly afraid of our police, of Trumpers openly talking about lynching us (and yes - they have more guns than us. Most liberals still refuse to consider becoming armed), and of losing everything and dying in a prison cell run by a for-profit corp.
This is a stage-4 cancer diagnosis on a social scale, and people are still figuring out if we want chemo or to try to ride this out as long as we can.
On top of that, while conservative social media spaces are full of people threatening violence, all of the platforms are coming down hard on any space that discusses anything more provocative than holding a sign in a nonn-threatening manner in a way that abides any police order given.
There is no place to organize, and no one is proposing or organizing any serious strategy. Seriously – I’ve gone to local meetings, and all any activist org or politician will say is “organize with your neighbors (organize what?) and try to do mutual aid”.
That is not a meaningful response to an organization like the Heritage Foundation.
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but when I see all the people actively turning off their higher-cognitive functions on purpose
Counterpoint, it’s not all the people. You and I are depressed as fuck, our brains like to tell us that everybody is against us, it’s all worthless, and the only good part is the end, but that’s not very accurate.
I burnt out as a caregiver for developmentally disabled adults, due to lack of support in the community. I was working nights, working with clients that had violent behavior (unfun fact, 100% of people with Down’s Syndrome will develop early-onset dementia), and my friend group imploded with the stupidest drama. It’s too easy for me to think “most people have never had a client have a seizure in the shower and spray shit and vomit all over them, blah blah addicted to comfort”, but it turns out that’s a really terrible way of getting people on your side.
I’m going to a local meetup this weekend to discuss plans and mutual aid in my rural town. There’s not a lot of us, but nobody can argue it’d be better to stay home.
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Yes, it’s hard and it is getting worse. But the revolution will not be televised. There is an overwhelming interest in keeping people from knowing about each other, they’re not going to make it easy for us to organize. The internet is complicit, as it’s controlled by only a handful of companies, who don’t want to lose their monopoly either.
One of the ways in which to drive a wedge is to highlight the failings of the other side. It’s more personal for you and I, and therefore more effective. We cannot focus more on the failings than on the successes, even if there is more fail than success, because success is birthed from failure. Yes, it feels weird, it feels like you’re ignoring how badly we’re all doing, but we have to keep our eyes forward and not get bogged down with despair.
I saved more than a handful of young men from falling into that darkness
It is just a small thing, but you are only one droplet in a cascade. People who have stood on the precipice and stepped back are in a more valuable position to reach others on the edge of darkness, and you have enabled that to spread. If darkness can spread like a mind-virus, so can the sun.
Agreed, it’s so many wrongs built upon a foundation of awful; I think the internet magnifies and accelerates this enshitification. Thank you for your work
Wow, I’m three days late, sorry.
But of course no one can fight back alone. This is why you have to start grassroots and build up to national movements. Start with mutual aid: helping members of the community with the expectation of being helped in return. Food drives, worker’s co-ops, free daycare services, etc. Once we have community we can push the issue when the time is ripe (e.g., a BLM-level protest). Labor strikes, rental strikes, expropriating food and clothes etc.
In many successful revolutions, an army was a part of uprising. Serving in the army does not make you any less of a voter.
To get that kind of momentum going against a literal police state would be difficult to say the least. Such a movement would also likely be smothered in it’s crib by the surveillance state we built ostensibly to keep us safe from the terrorist boogeyman that America created.
Even if the revolutionaries win, there’s no guarantee that the government that comes as a result would be better in any way. Great warriors rarely make great rulers.
This is it. Anyone who might be interested in “fighting back” who has half a braincell knows it’s just not possible. It needs to come from a state, or even a city. It needs to have some political figurehead, some borders, some organization. Taking on the government is not a DIY operation, and said government is not going to let some organization pop up when that organization’s goal is to fight back.
We’ve been “legally” spied on here for my entire adult life, and then some. Brainwashing red hats was the last step.
My biggest fear is what emerges after.
No, no, don’t you know, this time it’ll be different. Every time a government was violently overthrown by the local population what came after was either dictatorship or warlordism. But this time it’ll be different! Trust me, bro!
I’d be willing to accept help from France again
what i’ve learned from history is that the killing doesn’t stop after the revolution, it just continues. if there’s no more nobles to decapitate, then suspected “supporters” of nobles get executed, then just people suspected of being counter-revolutionary (whatever that means).
the killing doesn’t stop after the revolution, that is why it’s best if the revolution itself stays as bloodless as possible.
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Violent revolutions almost always result in bad governments for exactly this reason, i.e. it’s only fringe idealists that get it together enough to lead one, and such people are usually terrible at doing actual grown-up governing.
It’s why it’s so infuriating to see right-wingers claim that basic social safety nets and tackling inequality are Communism, because it’s like, if you want Communism then pushing half the population towards that level of desperation is exactly how you end up with it.
We are in the middle of a revolution, just not one of, for, or by the people.
Now that corporations are people, they are “fighting for their rights” to make obscene profits; it’s a “Cash is King” plutocratic revolution.
“How would they deal with the army?” Probaby even better then other folks in shitty technicals like Afghanistan and Vietnam did to be honest. They aren’t going to nuke American rebels because then they’d win a big radioactive pile of shit. Think they’d shoot missiles in NYC? Fat fucking chance. Even tanks rolling down Main street is gonna set off alarms.
The soldiers, firing into the crowds, brought death to tiananmen square. Survivors were simply run down. The tanks never fired a shell, because they didn’t need to. In the decades since then, nothing has emerged to shift that power dynamic in the favor of the people.
We’re not worried about missiles, stealth aircraft, armor penetrating rounds, their stupid microwave cannons, drone strikes or whatever other sci-fi bullshit looks good on television. We’re worried about armored vehicles rolling down mainstreet while there are thousands of people there, and the crowd crush that results. We’re worried about one zealous national guardsman with an M2 firing blindly into a march as it crosses a bridge. We’re worried about any leaders that emerge being quietly disappeared overnight, about our families being singled out by a teen at a fusion center that’s watching Joe Rogan on their phone, or about the simple fact that the military could just turn off critical infrastructure and our cities would grind to a halt. We have no way to stop that.
The Oligarchy can only roll over one protest. After that it is guerilla time.
The US is prime real estate for that. Large thinly populated areas, large remote mountain areas, densely populated urban areas. Population with access to guns at large, access to chemicals for explosives…
Tiananmen worked, because it crushed the resistance. Once the resistance decides not to be crushed, it is usually game over for the Oligarchy. It won’t be pretty though and it can take a while.
The key is that in asymmetric warfare, the regular army needs to defeat every single resistance fighter. The resistance just needs to survive as it pecks away at the regular army.
The US only fights insurgencies it creates - and on terms it dictates. A civil war is invariably the bloodiest kind, and should one break out in the US there would not be a coalition to help reign in the ROI this time. It would not be vietnam, or afghanistan - both wars that were lost in congress, not on the battlefield - it would be palestine.
The wars were lost on the battlefield. It was impossible to achieve any of the goals set out by military means. The military failed in its objectives and there was no reason to believe, that tossing another trillion dollar and another half a million soldiers onto it, would have changed the equation.
The US pulled out because it lost. As we have seen time and time again it is not that the politicians were reluctant to engage in another attempt in another country later. They did it time and time again. So it is not for a lack of political will, but for the ability of the US to achieve any of their stated or real objectives by a prolonged military occupation on the other side of the globe.
I don’t want to trade rhetorical quips with an ally - we both gain nothing from me waxing didactic about doctrinal warfare. I just want to caution that the political landscape shapes all wars, and the metaphorical terrain on which a US civil war would be fought would be abjectly alien to what you’re envisioning.
And the majority of people are libs and conservatives that think ”capitalism isn’t perfect, but it’s the best we got.”
I’m not sure the answer to this question but I’ll be ready with my de-ICE-ing agent.
Forget blackjack, we’re just gonna let the Hookers run this one. They will always do a better job than those fascists.
Every single hooker I’ve ever met had more of a moral compass than the US far right, so I’m with you there.
Americans don’t know how to cooperate, they’re raised with a “me first” mentality. They can’t fathom the thought of laying down their lives for their countrymen, so unless you propose to them a revolution where every one of them gets treated as the main character and everybody else as the supporting cast, they won’t lift a finger.
Also “the fellow countryman” being racist and fully supporting of the whole process doesn’t exactly help with motivation.
Also there are those of us who don’t see other Americans as countrymen, I am a Californian first American by technicality. I hope to drop shells on Utah one day. Nevada, Arizona, Washington, and Oregon are cool though, Idaho has the potential to be cool if the politicians and zealots were purged Idaho Falls has a great MilSurp store.
Only if we get nuked. It’s still continuous from the Bear Flag Revolt.
Disunited States of America would be great, thank you.
Divided States of America is a better term.
