this post was submitted on 02 Mar 2025
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I mean to quote them:
They've got their excuse.
To be fair those are two sides of the same coin. If you can't get people to think "I'm not doing enough and that's a problem" you'll never get them to get off their asses. This is particularly relevant in America because Americans have forgotten what it means to actually resist their government.
Thank you. I just want to add that they saw all that and said "just looks like protesting" as if personally helping organize action against the coal industry using grassroots techniques to some small success is "just protesting," or raising money for disabled people in community "not much apart from protesting." The gall, from someone who probably hasn't been to even a measley protest. And yes, I am saying protesting isn't enough, speaking from someone who's done it for 14 years. Waving signs does fucking nothing. It disrupts nothing. You have to put your bodies on the road and your safety on the line like we did.
Maybe you should run for office. Probably would have been far more effective, and if America is short on anything it's leadership.
If I ran for office and mentioned anything about the $36 TRILLION in offshore tax havens to help pay for things like infrastructure, UBI, and universal healthcare, i'd be fucking assassinated. The problem about wanting change and working within the system to achieve that, is that it's never you who changes the system, it's the system that'll inevitably change you. There's nothing wrong with compromise in a situation, but compromising yourself in a situation is another story completely.
To be fair to them too, they were specifically asking what you did to resist Trump and co. As to everything else they said:
I get that you're angry—hell, I'm angry and I've never been to the United States—but it seems you're responding to something other than what the other person actually said. Also getting Americans to get off their asses is one thing, but you do have a bit of a holier than thou attitude you should probably work on if you want to be successful at getting them off their asses. If you don't want to succeed at it then you do you I guess; like I said, you and everyone else who has been fighting this fight since the beginning have the right to be angry.
I am responding to something other than what the person actually said. People like myself (and the countless nameless faces who actually stick their necks out) have been screaming about this to people who metaphorically can't see or hear, for decades, only for them to be the "holier than thou" one trying to look for hypocrisy or hatred in other people who've done more than them. Why focus on idols like Trump and Co when they're just symptoms of the greater problems - capitalistic greed/corporate irresponsibility - and then after listing our many years of efforts to fight it and then say "Yeah but what did you do to stop Trump and Musk specifically?" That sort of nitpicking, missing the forest for the trees attitude is what angers me so, it's proof of how blind people are to the realities of what it means to be in a democracy. "If you want a democracy, you have to be a player."
Oh, I see; you're a dyed in the wool "down with capitalism" lefty. In this part of history it'll be necessary to tolerate the presence of normies—people who want to stop the backsliding of democracy but don't really understand or care about the down with capitalism stuff. Those people can then be radicalized into full fledged lefties, but at least at present it's important to accept their aims not being as ambitious as yours, even though as you said they're missing the forest for the trees. They with proper education can and do stop going after individual trees and start burning the whole forest, but you have to be patient (or not, you do you). That aside the holier than thou attitude I'm talking about is mostly the bragging. That's probably not what it feels to you, but to an external observer you definitely sound like you're bragging about the fascist bricks you got hit with, so.. uh... yeah.
Not bragging, just proud.