politics
Welcome to the discussion of US Politics!
Rules:
- Post only links to articles, Title must fairly describe link contents. If your title differs from the site’s, it should only be to add context or be more descriptive. Do not post entire articles in the body or in the comments.
Links must be to the original source, not an aggregator like Google Amp, MSN, or Yahoo.
Example:
- Articles must be relevant to politics. Links must be to quality and original content. Articles should be worth reading. Clickbait, stub articles, and rehosted or stolen content are not allowed. Check your source for Reliability and Bias here.
- Be civil, No violations of TOS. It’s OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It’s NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
- No memes, trolling, or low-effort comments. Reposts, misinformation, off-topic, trolling, or offensive. Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.
- Vote based on comment quality, not agreement. This community aims to foster discussion; please reward people for putting effort into articulating their viewpoint, even if you disagree with it.
- No hate speech, slurs, celebrating death, advocating violence, or abusive language. This will result in a ban. Usernames containing racist, or inappropriate slurs will be banned without warning
We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.
All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.
That's all the rules!
Civic Links
• Congressional Awards Program
• Library of Congress Legislative Resources
• U.S. House of Representatives
Partnered Communities:
• News
view the rest of the comments
Hey “we just gotta vote harder” Americans, what you gonna do when they take voting away?
I am probably part of the 0.001% of people who actually had interest in and read exit polling from 2024, because it contains data that makes a lot of people very uncomfortable, particularly on the left who have blamed repeated losses on voter turnout.
The problem is not turnout, the problem in American democracy is the subversion of the broadest swath of people, the tuned-out, overworked, misinformed liberal majority in America.
The last several federal elections have had the highest voter turnout in American history.
What they didn't have though was people who had any involvement in the issues or understanding how the political system works, and apparently no attention spans at all. Many millions of the people who voted for Trump were people who voted for Obama or supported Bernie Sanders, and that should spark a massive conversation about leftist/democrat messaging, but is largely glossed over. And a massive swath of the voting was literally hinged on the price of eggs at the time, and the well-known effect of voters making their decisions based on current economics and the party currently in power.
A lot of this came from forces foreign and domestic doing everything they can to salt the discourse, poison all the wells and boost all the weirdest, worst nonsense on both sides so that average people who only get their news and information from two hours of facebook or twitter scrolling every week had no idea what was going on.
So yes, "just vote harder" didn't and won't work going forward. Our chance at turning this around though is that people right now are a LOT more unhappy with our politics than they were in 2024, everyone in 2024 were far more comfortable and didn't actually believe the stories about Trump being a fascist dictator, and tuned out his previous administration because attention spans broadly are melted. Right now if elections were held, or canceled, Trump will get wiped out one way or another.
The GOP's only hope of retaining power is literally a fascist takeover, they know it, they're just too dumb broadly to pull it off so I have a good feeling midterms are going to be a violent spank in the ass, and Trump will likely not finish his term. This country has actually survived many similar periods. If enough people can get their brains disengaged from the slop then we have a chance.
They already did in '24.
Write a strongly worded letter.
Protest peacefully and grumble while more rights are stripped. I have zero faith in Americans anymore. They wont do what needs to be done.
No, they wont. And the rest of the world suffers for it. The American way.
Walk me through your plan to depose the American government in less than a year. Don't forget that if you fail or are caught planning they don't just kill you, they kill you by injecting you with poison that feels like being set on fire from the inside while you suffocate, take everything you or your family possess leaving your survivors homeless and destitute, shoot your dog and probably a couple of family members too.
Like, if you've lost all faith we'll "do what needs to be done".... What needs to be done?
You don't need to storm the capitol, just sit on your asses for a week. Nation wide strike will get gears moving pretty fast as production, transport, maintenance and everything shuts down. Get your community together, share food, have strong social bond with strikers so that those in need get help and so on.
One saturday afternoon doesn't cut it, but it doesn't take that long either until it starts to really affect everything in society, mainly company profits which seems to be the driving force for anything political around there. It's not going to be easy, it'd been far easier to go an vote against for current situation, but that train is long gone and it's not going to get any easier in the future.
Alright. How do I make that happen? I'm assuming since you're answering so confidently that you actually have an answer and have done something like this before.
You certainly couldn't just be another armchair revolutionary who handwaved the entire "plan a nationwide general strike and risk execution for insurrection" based purely on what you think sounds straightforward, right?
Most revolutions have outside partisans who come and lend a hand. Why don't you come over and do that?
Maybe it's a bit trickier to organize hundreds of millions of people to have at least passive support for something and interrupt the social momentum of hundreds of years of uninterrupted peaceful transfer of power than can be accomplished in less than a year and being shitty towards the people who are upset and don't know what to do is just ... Being shitty.
I have been on strike, I'm a active participant on local community and have been a part of local policy changes. But as I live in a civilized nation I have the leverage of previous generations who did organize and build foundations for strong communities so I didn't have to start from nothing.
I mentioned it would not be easy as the easy way was voting for Harris. But with that mindset of yours I suppose there's nothing anyone can do and the game is lost already.
Organization in todays information world is relatively easy. Spreading information and communication with different groups is a very much solved problem. Getting people on board should not be a problem either at least based on what I can see from the news, a lot of people are fed up on the current status and a lot of people are already getting organized. It's small steps all the way. You get handful of people to join the movement and each of them do the same and not before long your pyramid has quite a lot of people and getting more to join gets easier on every step.
And for me personally, I'm not coming to the US. I'll stay at home and continue to do my part on my community.
I'm not saying it's impossible, I'm saying that the people who are saying that they've lost all faith in Americans because we haven't full actualized a revolution in less than a year are being shitty for no good reason. Armchair revolutionaries who think that it should be done now because it's supposed to be as simple as "organize, kick them out, make a new government and they all just say shucks while we arrest them".
As you said, people are getting organized. But to some people outside the US, that's not enough and we should be done deposing the government by now. That's what I'm saying is unreasonable.
Based on the finish dude in your icon and finish instance name, I'm assuming you're in Finland.
Organization takes longer here than it would there based purely on population. I'm in an average sized state. Our population is twice that of Finland. The state is about the same size as the country.
Even if we were all on board even for a strike, it's still gonna take longer than so many people seem to expect us to be able to do it in.
Things have been brewing for quite a bit longer than a year, but that's not the point at least I'm trying to make. Organization has started (atleast based on news coverage around here) only now when things are really getting out of control. There was time, there was easier options but from now on it's going to be more and more difficult, specially if orange toddler actually manages to stall midterm elections. So, due to the circumstances, the time is essential, and (again, based on news coverage and other limited info I have) there's quite a few people, to put it bluntly, just talking that someone should do something, while wery little actually gets done.
I am from Finland and while our communities are fairly small I can understand how it takes longer to organize bigger masses, but the whole humanity is still pretty much just 6 handshakes away from eachother. As a member of local council I've at least tried to change local politics and from experience I can say that it takes an afternoon or two to individually call trough ~20 politically active people and organize something. Those 20 people can then each call to their contacts and (assuming there's no overlap) just from those two steps of "pyramid" and few days you can get 400 individuals on board or at least informed what's coming up. 3rd "step" totals to 8400 people, 4th 160k and from there the number is in millions.
Obviously things in real world don't work quite like pure calculations, but with a pretty low precentage of active individuals it's still absolutely possible to reach out meaningful portion of the whole country within a few months.
Revolution. You people dicked around so long that it’s now more dangerous. But it’s probably your only way out. You don’t get sympathy points from me for waiting too long. Do something or face criticism from the rest of the world. Simple as that.
Yes, that's what I'm asking for the details of how you do it. I don't know how to do a revolution. My assumption is that the people who confidently and definitely know that we're doing it wrong must have some idea how to do it right.
So again, how do I overthrow the US government?
"So long"? What's your threshold for a reasonable timeline for a revolution to start? he hasn't even been in office a full year.
Also, this is his second term of presidency. Also? If you think the issue is just that a democrat isn’t in office then you don’t actually understand the issue with the US.
The US is controlled by capitalist oligarchs, your Elite. It has been since before I was even born. When I say your people should have revolted long ago? I’m talking about decades ago. Long before Trump.
There are many things you can do to support positive change. Talk to your community. Work with local organizers. If you dont want to be put in a situation where you have to be violent? Fine, push for a general strike. There are groups in every municipality trying to do this, maybe start by trying to get in touch with your local IWW or union block. Just as one example.
US is a big country. Surely there are people who know what to do. Find them, support them. You don't have to be the leader.
Do I look under rocks for revolutionary leaders?
No, you use this crazy new underground networking system called the internet. Theres discords for like every niche ass party thats trying to do activism now. Its easy to even find MAGA Communists near you if you look for it, and if you can do that I’m pretty sure you can find anything to put yourself behind if you actually take the time and effort to do it.
how long does it take you to get to your country's capitol city? I can't find an exact number for the US but I estimate less than 25% of Americans live within a one day drive to our capitol. meaning it is a significant investment for most of the country, one that the median household can't afford.
And DC is designed to quell demonstrations, protests, and absolutely riots. It's one of the few planned cities in America, and they've thought every avenue through in terms of barriers and crowd control. The National Guard has plans upon plans.
The most serious threat to power in this country would be the types of activities that GOT us this country, and they've long known that.
I don't want to discourage anyone but they'd have little problem turning machine guns on us all, and what would happen? The rest of America would see it on the news and social media, and go "oh God," and then cook dinner and go to work the next day, in shock no doubt, but... well we have had national shocks before and life kept going.
I don't see a way through unless the military itself were to reject the authority at the top and turn on them.
Rioters wouldn't get anywhere near the Capitol ever. Thatmuch has been proven!
I live in Canada. It would take me 3 days.
Anyway you dont have to go to the capital to put up resistance. This isnt 18th century France.
I'll give you an example. My country was practically shut down for a week by a handful of people because they organized and blocked the railroads. Canada is highly dependant on its rail freight.
Not saying that works in the US. Just that there are ways if resisting that dont involve marching with some signs in the street. Your government doesnt care. Protests wont work.
Yeah, American citizens storming and taking control of government buildings is impossible!
Oh wait, no it fucking isn’t, and we absolutely know this because MAGA fucking did it. The number of people who are ANTI Trump, if the polls are to be believed, are TWICE AS MANY as pro Trump. So why do you people keep claiming that doing nothing is the only fucking option? Are you a psy op? Are you secretly pro Trump and trying to crush dissent? What is your game here exactly? Because I simply refuse to believe that someone can be this obtuse.
"We've tried nothing and are out of options"
“Its okay, when the primaries come we are gonna really vote hard and get democrats that will FIX THIS!!!
I’m gonna vote for and support the establishment guy though.”
Huh it's almost like the President and therefore the military he's in charge of were supporting that instead of trying to shut it down.
Not everyone who has a different opinion is trying to run a psychological endgame, or is obtuse.
Any excuse to absolve yourselves from action.
You asked why Americans won't do anything and I answered. I'm not a psyop, I'm just a dude trying to feed my family and keep the roof over our heads. you want me go erect a guillotine in DC? cool let me go get shot or thrown in prison while my family starves. I'm not saying nothing can be done, I'm just not the right person to say what it is that we can do.
nothing. Fox will tell them elections are not needed.
If magas don't go to vote it's a good thing, no?