Like, sorry for obviously doomer posting. Sorry if this sounds like a fed-post to deter people from protesting/organizing - which I don't mean to do by any means. But like... honestly, how is anything going to change? Materially. Logistically.
We're living in a country and a time where you can literally have your life ruined for simply taking your phone with you to a protest. Sentenced with fines or imprisonment. Or at the very least charged with all that shit, and having your life completely fucked over by it. Idk about the rest of you, but I don't think my job would keep me around if I didn't show up one morning because I was arrested at a protest, much less because of the stigma of "unprofessional behavior" that has. And it took months to get the job in my field I have now, and I'm just barely getting by - and this is as someone privileged to have some help from parents and no dependents.
On a larger scale, how the fuck is any protest or action by anyone gonna change things? Anything that ideally would be influential enough to change things (ie [REDACTED] style things) would probably be prevented the moment anyone even considered it, the feds descending on those involved the moment any email sent or plan spoken aloud. How the hell can anything change in this country short of an all out intervention by China or some sort of a unified South American socialist coalition? How can any movement on the ground in the US change shit at this point from inside the oppressive police state we live in? How is any sort of "organizing" or protesting done right now any more effective than electoralism? I mean, remember 2020? Literally shit all came from that.
I just feel so hopeless and conflicted. Is it really worth it going on on the street to a protest and getting my shit rocked by a cop in the fucking juggernaut's armor with a metal baton and bean bag gun, or run over by a pickup truck chud plowing through an intersection if nothing will change like it didn't with 2020 or Ferguson? Is it wrong to have thoughts in my head worrying about the conflict of wanting to have some sort of successful artistic career VS abandoning any sense of bourgeois societal participation and spending my time and what little money I have solely focused on "revolutionary" organization in a country that will ruin me if I do anything besides silently hold a sign, alone, in a public park between the hours of 9am and 5pm?
How do we/I find hope of winning when we live in a literal country-wide panopticon?
I wish this was a fed post. I wish I was getting paid for this. I wish I didn't feel hopeless. I wish I was one of those evil, ghoulish fuckers toasting champagne rn over their hegemonic control as they repress us more and more each day. Instead this is a cry for help from someone who literally doesn't know what they should be doing or risking as we sink deeper in the shit.
Police states crumble fast when there is a genuine civil uprising that is actually violent. There just isn't enough of them to stop throngs of violent people.
As far as i can tell when westerners talk about revolution many are just talking about realizing all the propganda and how fucked up the state is. They don't mean an actually uprising with blood running down the street and power brokers fearing for their lives.
Most Americans and westerners have not really had much violence done to them since ww2. Most have never even been in a legit fight or attacked physically. So it's a pretty big ask to go from complacency to lobbing bombs.
When people get angry in large numbers they go from complacency to lobbing bombs really quickly actually. Sometimes in a matter of days.
The problem isn’t peoples complacency, it’s that the most intense police state to ever exist on planet earth is actively repressing subverting and coopting any movement that arises and killing or controlling them while still in their cribs before they can grow too large.
I agree, but also it's important to realize that there were reliable pressure release valves. The FBI/CIA didn't put down the American revolution, being able to afford a house did it. Now, we're getting to the point where the 30-50k year income bracket is going to be priced out of apartments and wind up in long term hotels until they totally fall through the cracks, and the previous bracket that lived in apartments are dropping out of the labor market and society as a whole if they aren't sharing a 2 bedroom with 6 other people. Even the Floyd protests were squelched through the vague promise that a Biden presidency would return the "tension" back to pre-Trump standards (which are still genocidal).
No one is promising anyone under the age of 35 anything. The best you can get from the Republicans are low hanging culture war victories that alienate a larger amount of people each go around, and the Dems' offer is "eat shit and die for another highway lane". Post-2008 created a generation who had nothing, and post-2022 looks like it'll be demanding that generation to pay a price that their grandparents wouldn't have been able to pay when the state still allowed for social democratic concessions. You can't even fucking smoke decent cigs unless you spend the time to roll your own at this point.
I don't expect concessions to the working class anytime soon, but I disagree with the people also expecting some sort of balkanization to occur soon either. I think the United States as it stands currently is much more fragile and rotten than we realize, and only exists to suppress the working class. It's why the only real answer to inflation is to raise interest rates and get double digit unemployment. The state is totally moribund, and I think we're likely to see a total collapse of the economy. You'll try to go to McDonalds, but they'll have one or two members of management working, having to explain to customers that all they have for the day are fries because their supply of beef and chicken is delayed indefinitely. Walmart gets more infrequent restocks because they can't afford to pay anyone with a CDL more than $25k a year and turn a profit, the backlog on transistors needed to repair the trucks is immense, and the hours would be brutal for the early 1800's (they're already trying to get kids into these roles). School attendance plummets (it already has) as public schools, already stretched to the breaking point from lack of funding and staff (compounded by culture war bullshit) now have to share a portion of their budget with the private catholic charter school down the block, and that place is only kept afloat because they've never paid a cent in taxes despite tuition resembling the price of college two generations ago. A lot of kids are already priced out of sporting programs, even in public schools. Rolling blackouts become more commonplace. The water dries up to the west, but don't worry, that almond crop will will continue uninterrupted. Profit continues to plummet because even if business could operate at decent standards (which as of the time of me typing this out, it really can't in the US), whatever money the worker will have been able to scrap together will go straight to rent seekers. Both parties are totally captured by capital and refuse to use the state to reign it in even for their own sadistic agendas. Donald Trump governed like Jeb! would have except slightly louder, and Biden governed like Trump would have if he won. Things will stop.
Within that context, do you think the state garners more consent? Do you even think it maintains the ability to police as effectively? For what it's worth, by the Pentagon's own projections, they expect internal warfare against the US military around 2025, not due to an existing political faction taking up arms against the state (they largely benefit from it, even in it's rotting state) but due to economic conditions deteriorating until that's all that's left to do. I think after Floyd, and the increased tension from the recent Supreme Court ruling, and the impending depression (that'll make the one we've been living in for two years seem like a dream), we're on track. When that time comes, I'm sure the CIA/FBI/DHS will knock it out of the park. They have a fantastic track record against protracted guerilla warfare during the height of the empire's power, I'm sure they'll have no issues when the insurrection is coming from inside the house, and nothing's getting made.
:bloomer:
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Unnecessarily pessimistic. Why and by who? Do you think the 500 chapters of warring fash offshoots are going to do it? Because from what I remember from the last 6 years, they didn't spend any time ingratiating themselves to impoverished communities. Whenever they showed up to demonstrate past Charlottesville (which was a total failure), they've required police escort and were always vastly outnumbered. Their actions and support and in many ways their recruitment is dependent on the state. Jan 6th was organized by an FBI informant and allowed to happen because they knew the right wouldn't actually do anything other than tailgate.
The fash you have to worry about will be the remnants the state that you'll have to fight anyways if you want a fucking house. You should be much more afraid of Mormon G-Men than some dude named Odin who has spent the last five years posting slurs on Idaho dialup. The left isn't prepared for the collapse because we never get any sort of institutional experience, anyone who's kinda effective gets brutally murdered or imprisoned. The right operates with total impunity from the law, and they're so ineffective they left the fucking front door open for them and the Hunters and Kaitlyns of this country were too fucking useless to walk through. They're just as beholden to capital as the main political parties, and even if they could properly organize the day of the rope (they can't), it isn't going to get you a fucking meal.
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But those groups will still continue to infight against each other, and those affectations are ones they can afford because politics don't fucking matter to them. They can still afford to pretend that their camp of the saints shit matters because they can get their goods. They'll freak out and there will be violence, I would prefer this not to happen and there is a good possibility I will be on the receiving end of whatever violence happens, but their basic operations are tied to the state and while they'll be used against whatever manifests itself in the coming years, they're still just American libs. They want to speak to the manager just like every other Karen. They'll complain and whine and there will be those of them that will fight, but they'll blink and we will overcome them. Besides, cop gangs already exist in most major cities, and if our success really was dependent on the support of every Elgin, OK in the country over the collective working class, we never had a chance to begin with.
I'm sorry, their moment has come multiple times and they've whiffed it harder than the left ever has. It won't be their last failure.
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The right will be integrated into and organized by the police state when they need them to retire social movements. Learn the history of the rise of the Nazis that’s what they did.
Yeah most of the people in my home town would hoot and holler to shoot them some libs
The country by numbers is in the cities and burbs.
Rural areas are a small percentage of the actual population
And the thing that will convert liberals to communists is also going to fuel a fascist surge. Even if there are enough communists to do something it is by no means certain they will win or that they'll win soon. History is littered with failed uprisings and even the ones that won only did so through immense horrors. The Chinese revolution lasted decades for god's sake.
All real revolutions last decades.
:yea:
nah that post is full of shit
:bloomer: of the will, :side-eye-2: of the intellect
I can agree to that
how likely do you think a latam style military dictatorship would be in this case? From an outsiders perspective it seems more likely than chud insurrection or balkanization
I don't know because the military (from the outside) seems just as captured by capital as every other branch of the government. All the core leadership has been hand picked from the bourgeois for some time now. The CIA has always been an arm of Wall Street (it was actually started by a bunch of corporate lawyers). I see their class interests aligning with how things are currently, and until something happens (which it totally could, I'm not part of the military and we're really looking from the outside in), I see them suffering the same institutional rot. We don't even really have an army at this point, it's just a bunch of mercenaries, overly specialized officers from the wealthy suburbs, and grunts who sit in an army base for 8 months at a time until their leg gets blown up by a land mine.
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I think some type of police based dictatorship is the most likely with the military remaining “neutral.”
The movements are easy to coopt cuz there is no structure. There is no van gaurd there is no leadership. They also aren't serious in actually forcing what they want
Decentralized movements organically just fall apart. And that's what blm, occupy and other recent movements have been.
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Yeah I'm disagreeing with him. I know what i wrote
The USA police state is not destroying movements. They don't have to go under cover. They don't need to seduce an activist who's serious. Because the seriousness isn't there.
All they have to do is show up to a protest.
Place a few agent provocateurs Throw a brick. Give an opening for the police to do their job and than watch the protest scatter to the wind.
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Yes history. As in the past. And yes than i would agree.
But we are in govt where the police state is just as dumb and inept as the politicans leading it.
The America of the PAST is dead. We are entering a new stage where the momentum from the past successes, intelligence, and evil of the empire is gone.
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It's not a movement. It's a gathering of individuals who are trying to show displeasure with what's going on. Protests are not movements. They can become the beginning of one.
A movement requires some type of central leadership and planning.
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Huh
Why do you think a gathering of individuals with no central leadership is a movement?
They didn’t just fall apart, they were crushed, repressed, divided, and coopted by the state.
Yes good leadership and a vanguard would help, but such centralized leadership is very very easy to crush/divide for the state.
Or even just one dude coming in guns blazing. Lessons from Uvalde.