Doomer do-nothings are so incredibly frustrating. I get the frustration, but spreading apathy is not useful. Authoritarianism flourishes when apathy takes root among the populace.
you are doing nothing.
this is not resistance, it’s embarrassing. you all deserve what you get.
Americans have not had to protest like this in many many decades. That is it’s been “good enough” for a large part of the population to not really do anything, so there is no system that people can tap into like in France. So thinking that you are going to get a million+ people to go into the streets and shut everything down for a few weeks isn’t realistic.
American protest opposition also has a great response to these gatherings by getting them to turn into riots so there is justification for military style responses. Which makes people on the fence hesitant. Getting people to dip their toe in the lake of resistance is the best way forward. It’s slow, it looks silly and limiting but if it works it emboldens more people to do more.
“That is it’s been “good enough” for a large part of the population”
There’s the selfish ‘as long as it’s not me attitude’.
You also think it was ‘good enough’ and didn’t need to protest is even more telling and comfirms my view.
You were OK with having no healthcare, mass incarceration and de facto slavery in that system.
Authoritarian police with an unrivaled murder rate, mass drug abuse and homelessness.
ANY of those things would be reason for a population to revolt and resist.
The US simply doesn’t know better and think this is normal and mistakenly believe other countries are worse off.
Imagine being so pacified that they take all this.
And yes, real resistance is hard and difficult.
They are not going to give you anything by asking nicely.
The US population is like an abused housewife that stays with her bully would rather not make waves in the hope it will get better and doesn’t get another beating.
If she doesn’t resist and leave she doesn’t deserve saving.
There really is this need to feel like people are doing something even if they’re doing nothing.
Single day boycotts are completely ineffectual for a variety of reasons, reason #1 being the vast majority are either unaware or apathetic, #2 being even those who participate aren’t skipping particpation entirely, they just shift their economic participation to the day before or the day after.
So the end result is a zero sum game, but when you tell people that, they respond with “At least I’m trying!” 🤷♂️
Real doing something is a long term boycott. Not a one day thing. Real doing something is labor organization, unions allow collaboration at a higher level, and allow you to strike back at the throat.
Even protesting at a leftist capital is doing more than a single day’s blackout.
Go exercise your second amendment by a conservative senator’s house if you really want to do something (and I don’t mean that as a shoot them euphemism. Make them uncomfortable.)
The organization that organized the economic blackout has longer-term boycotts planned in the coming weeks. This is just the opening salvo. Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
Don’t let nothing be the enemy of good either. That’s all i need saying.
You need everyone in line for longer ones. Single day ones only serve to make the companies more prepared for longer ones.
You’re not getting “good”. A one day pause is not an effective strategy in any sense. It’s slacktivism. It’ll placate people who would have otherwise taken actual action.
This is it. If we want to have any effect it needs to be much longer than a day. One month would make a statement. You could even cave out food. You could also have people cancel their endless list of subscriptions or just scale back their lifestyle for a greater effect than a one day pause.
