Don’t get sad - get organised?
Comment on Is there any way our of the US political spiral?
Semi_Hemi_Demigod@lemmy.world 2 weeks agoI’ve been angry since I’ve been politically aware and I’m tired of it. It’s exhausting being angry and having no influence.
I’m too old to be angry all the time.
Brainsploosh@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Semi_Hemi_Demigod@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
That just sounds like angry with extra steps. And people.
Brainsploosh@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Which is how you gain influence and do something about it, no?
snail_stampede@midwest.social 2 weeks ago
In America, influence means money. If you can’t donate to a politician, you don’t have influence. That’s just how America works. You can’t build influence without wealth. As someome who has been involved with them, protests and marches don’t really cause a stir here any more, people just don’t care and it doesn’t really influence anything. You can get influence through violence, but people aren’t ready for that conversation and the right already has a head start on that anyway.
Semi_Hemi_Demigod@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Considering how little influence those groups already have I doubt it
immutable@lemm.ee 2 weeks ago
I still remember being taught about how politics is America is a pendulum.
It swings too far to the right and people get pissed and send it leftward. Then it swings too far to the left and people get pissed and send it rightward.
I have waited my entire life for the swing leftward, and I think I identified what broke America.
Let’s say that this pendulum swinging is necessary, we are a pack of goldfish swinging from left to right looking for something good with short short memories. This system can be metastable, you don’t make a ton of progress on anything but you just sorta bounce between the two sides and the status quo sticks around and you don’t slide into madness.
When 9/11 happened and Ws war on terror emerged, I worried that it would break the system. But in 2008, Obama emerged with a progressive message of hope and change. The pendulum I was told about was about to swing left. I had lived through the right swing of Ws time in office, and now I got to see what the left had to offer (which as a leftist was very exciting).
I watched two phenomenons happen concurrently that broke the system.
Obama wasn’t the first to do this, Clinton’s triangulation strategy was also a democrat governing from the center.
So we have a captured Democratic Party, beholden to the donor class and they capture the periodic leftswing energy and hold it center / center-right. Things fail to get better and the population goes “well fuck the left doesn’t have any answers, let’s swing the pendulum back the other way”
Over time the result is that the Overton window shifts and shifts and shifts until an oligarch is doing nazi salutes and the corporate media is going “oh he probably isnt really doing a nazi thing, he’s just advancing policies that nazis would love and saying things nazis would say and is excited and you know how hard it is to not do a nazi salute when you are excited.”
Our only hope now is that trump doesn’t slowly boil us into fascism and overplays and the people revolt. But Americans have proven to be willing to just take it in the ass rougher and longer than I’d ever imagine.
spankmonkey@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
It’s more of a ratchet than a pendulum.
DarkFuture@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
For a nation known for being tough guys with guns who will fuck their government, or any government that messes with them, up if necessary, all I’ve actually seen all my life is a bunch of pussies that let the wealthy walk all over us. And I’m not exactly a spring chicken.