Comment on YSK: A real American Civil war will NOT be like Battlefield or COD.
theacharnian@lemmy.ca 4 days ago
Not American, so feel free to stop reading.
It’s ridiculous to me how you yanks go from zero to a hundred like this. Either normality or civil war. Like there is no in between? You have an authoritarianism problem. So resist authoritarianism. What makes you think that the only way to resist is shooting people? Resistance is a spectrum, and you have barely started using democratic means to fight back (you just started electing democratic socialists), much less active procedural and institutional warfare (is Bernie demanding a vote for every procedural point requiring a vote? Are the Dems actually using any rat fucking tactic to make the state ungovernable? Are your local and state governments really resisting beyond making angry noises?). You have barely tried non violent resistance (not the same as peaceful!) but you’re such a violent culture that you jump straight to military solutions. Wtf. Those come at the very end, if everything else has failed. Has it? Nowhere near. So this talk about civil war, is that really useful?
You have barely tried non violent resistance (not the same as peaceful!) but you’re such a violent culture that you jump straight to military solutions.
Most Americans are victims of a regime and not violent themselves. They’re scared and going through something most Canadians and many post-WWII Europeans will never have to deal with in their lifetimes. People are being murdered, and you’re telling the victims it’s their fault and that they’re violent.
You missed my point.
You missed mine.
I’m not denying fear, violence, or victimhood. And I’m not equating oppressors with the oppressed. I should push back on the idea that naming cultural patterns equals blaming victims, or that only people inside the worst possible historical analogy are allowed to analyze trajectories.
I’m talking about how societies slide, not about who deserves what. Those are different conversations. I’ve been on the receiving end of state violence. I’ve marched, been gassed, watched movements radicalize too fast and burn themselves out. That’s exactly why I’m saying this: jumping straight to existential framing and armed horizons doesn’t protect anyone it only narrows the future until only catastrophe is left.
You don’t need to already be in a Holocaust to talk about escalation dynamics. In fact, if you wait until everything is unspeakable, analysis is already useless. Yes, fear is justified and preparation is understandable and necessary. But when fear becomes immune to critique, it stops being a warning signal and starts being a steering wheel.
My point hasn’t changed: there is still space, Real Political Space, for non-violent (not peaceful!) resistance, that can be powerfully disruptive. Once that space collapses, it doesn’t reopen because people were right about how bad things felt. I’m arguing against that collapse, not minimizing what’s at stake.
You’re totally right. A war is the last avenue to take. But you also are here on Lemmy, so you must see the constant calls for US Americans to take up arms against one another, despite the fact that avenues remain.
Shit sucks here. Shit will suck a lot more if there’s a war. And it will suck here and everywhere else. A lot more.
You’re absolutely right. Generations jave been indoctrinated to give up autonomy and control to the system. People have been socially and economically backed into a corner where they don’t feel like they can make any real change in their lives.
They know transcending class barriers is impossible (though they lie to themselves about it) and they don’t really believe that politics make a difference. People don’t vote. They scrabble at shit jobs and go into debt to feel richer.
Violence is the one form of power they’re truly clinging to. A gun is a surrogate for control. It’s power you can exert in your narrow sphere.
Most of this perception is wrong, but it’s a part of the culture. The idea that the only way this can get fixed is violent civil war is a game of chicken with the ruling class and they’re betting that people won’t actually rise up.
Americans can not comprehend a gunless solution without pizza in the end
Every single leftist could have resisted a lot of this using the internet to spread a message.
Knightfox@lemmy.world 4 days ago
The problem is that the steps between zero and a hundred are incremental rights which take decades to establish. If you are a non-American then you might have those steps already established, but currently the US does not. So once the status quo passes beyond the acceptable parameters the only possible solution is violence.
Another user I spoke with asked about collective rebellion, union strikes, and general resistance, but these don’t work if the infrastructure isn’t already in place. You can’t start a strike if you don’t have a union and your co-workers don’t agree, you can’t take up arms without at least a state level rebellion, most protests are effectively meaningless, and unless you are willing to give up everything (job, family, and well being) then you’ll never amount a significant resistance.
For the most part people want to live their lives with the least amount of fucking up they can. So long as the republican’s don’t fuck up their shit too much they will keep their heads down and vote in the elections.
Democrats and states both follow the same rules. They will try to counter the Republicans, but if that means a government shutdown with old people and the poor going without assistance then they are willing to cave. So far we aren’t at the point where any US group is willing to make real sacrifice to make a change, such as a fighting, going without, or causing their family to suffer.
UniversalBasicJustice@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 days ago
This is a major point that those outside of the US seem to miss, I think. The sheer depth of contempt for unions and unionization I’ve experienced is a massive barrier to organizing any significant resistance. I’m very certain a majority of US citizens are unaware of what a general strike even looks like. Corporate propaganda has very successfully vilified and diminished unions for a long time.
theacharnian@lemmy.ca 4 days ago
On the one hand yes you are behind on some kinds of labour organizing.
On the other hand, it’s not that simple.
a) you have a very long history of minority organizing. Black Americans, Chicanos, indigenous people, and other minorities have survived for generations. It sounds like a leftie cliché, but you guys should really take leadership from them.
b) you don’t have the baggage that comes with entrenched left wing politics. There is a thing like too much left wing politicking. In Greece for example, land of spectacular antifa riots, the left is absolutely paralyzed and completely fragmented. Too much history, too many reasons to blame this or that left faction for what they did 10,20,30, sometimes 60 or more years ago. You have a chance to build on a green field.
c) one thing you Americans actually have going for you is that you guys actually believe in democracy. It’s a thing we in the rest of the world have always kind of being weirded out by you that you want to be electing judges and sherrifs and school boards etc. And you actually have this libertarian steak in you that’s kind of interesting when it comes to resistance. You have so much democratic institutional hardware just lying around.
d) you actually are close to some of the powerful economic structures, institutions, and pop culture centres in the planet. Anything you do will and already does reverberate globally in ways that others don’t.
So, while you do have very big challenges you also have very big opportunities. And friends man, you have friends. I know we give you guys shit all the time, but trust me, when Americans rise up and stand up we all feel a bit taller.
Knightfox@lemmy.world 4 days ago
I feel like what you are touching at is that liberals in the US, and Americans in general, are waiting for a touch stone. So far nothing has gone so far as to start the fire. On the other hand there has been no centralizing ember, someone to carry the torch.
Yes, the US has a long history of minority organizing, but minorities are one of the worst groups for turning out for elections (in fact minorities are more likely to turn out if they are voting for Republicans than they are for anyone else, a key element of being a conservative in the US is turning out to vote but liberals can’t seem to harness that energy).
The US doesn’t have the baggage as you mentioned, but the existence of the two party system carries a ton of baggage on it’s own and has effectively squashed most third party resistance.
Most American’s do believe in Democracy, but sadly one half is too stupid to know what it is and the other half only believes in it when it supports their ideas. The second group is one which would happily ban all abortions and then complain when a woman can’t get an abortion even though the pregnancy is killing her. My very own cousin is white trash poor with his children living on government assistance, but thinks we need to end welfare because the minorities are using it. These people are too stupid for governance.
To your final point, the US left needs a leader, a cult of personality to combat Trump, but there frankly isn’t anyone right now. So far no one high enough up in the social circle has been willing to stick their head out far enough to rally around.
I hate to say it, but the US is at the point where we need a life line. Just like the US coming in and occupying Germany to eliminate the Nazis, we now need an outside force to help fix our shit. Short of that the US needs another civil war, but I’m not so certain that it will go the way we want it.
theacharnian@lemmy.ca 4 days ago
The reasons you outlined are why you are in trouble. As in, if they weren’t the case you would be in trouble. It’s a bit of a circular tautology. But they are not things that doom you. They are the shape of the whole you’re in. And it’s on you guys to find a way out. There’s no way around that. And no, the world is not coming to save you: there is no cavalry.
I don’t think you guys are doomed. I think the opposite, that the American people are a sleeping giant that can shake the world. And no, I don’t think you need to jump straight to shooting reach other.