Absolutely fantastic. Once you get over the initial chuckle at how novel a concept it is, its a god damn power play.
An army marches on its stomach.
A place to share screenshots of Microblog posts, whether from Mastodon, tumblr, ~~Twitter~~ X, KBin, Threads or elsewhere.
Created as an evolution of White People Twitter and other tweet-capture subreddits.
RULES:
RELATED COMMUNITIES:
Absolutely fantastic. Once you get over the initial chuckle at how novel a concept it is, its a god damn power play.
An army marches on its stomach.
Let them eat sausage.
If you’re gonna protest, might as well eat good while doing it.
And yet i've never seen a french protest where they had decent sound system. Not that important when the goal is to make noise, but they sure got their priorities
You can't do that in USA. You don't have the public transport infrastructure.
Ahhh but many cities and towns have some sort of rails in the streets, and bonus: they're not being used!
I just thought of how that would look on the San Francisco cable car tracks. Fast sausages.
Middle aged American here, and when I was a kid the culture around me regarding france was basically "lol they surrender." And that whole stupid thing probably peaked in 2003 with Freedom Fries.
But now?
I honestly wonder if any other nation's population has their heads on straight as much as the French. The only place in Europe where I have spent much time though is up in Sweden, and the nords seem pretty good at life-ing too.
Historically, the French really only surrendered once, unfortunately evocative of the "but you fuck a goat one time ..." joke. It didn't help that they surrendered to one of the biggest monsters in history, at a time where they arguably didn't need to surrender. TBF, the main reason their biggest ally (Britain) didn't surrender at the same time was the fact that they were able to run away.
Freedom Fries
As an European, I still can't believe you guys did that
They've been flirting with far-right government like most everyone else, but their protesting game is on point. The whole country being smaller than Texas helps, too.
Yeah, the average population density of the US is a lot lower than many people realize. Protests are seen as city-based things, both geographically and culturally.
And then you have eu-nation-sized red states that can hold many many trumpers who are unable to play nice with others because they don't have to have neighbors.
How on earth the fact that your country also has was swats of empty land stops you from doing effective protesting? Or any, actually.
It's only one factor. The bigger factor is that our police are insanely militarized. If my black ass tried to barbecue at a protest, I'd get gunned the fuck down, then I'd be unnamed in the news stories (if there were any), and the cop would get a medal for killing a "terrorist".
It does seem they're suffering from the same rightward-slide that many other countries are facing though, unfortunately.
Middle aged American here, and when I was a kid the culture around me regarding france was basically “lol they surrender.”
Copied from my earlier comment elsewhere:
Have an extensive history of military might, from rampaging barbarian hordes, to a continent-conquering emperor, to a foreign legion famed as being one of the most badass fighting forces in the world, and nobody bats an eye. But get embarrassingly outflanked one time, and you never hear the end of it!
explanation since the comm isn't History Memes this time
One post that I read somewhere else on fedi was in the lines of, you can't reasonably think French are cowards, they made snails into fine cuisine.
The French have been refining protesting since 1790.
Guys, take lessons, take lessons!
For what. To utilize all the rail lines in my city to grill.
Excuses incoming in 3, 2, 1...
"But, but, but the us country is huge. We can't be expected to protest about something all the way over there..."
"But, but, but, wait for the midterms. We'll sort it then."
"But, but, but, the protests are gaining steam now. It's not easy to coordinate these things and we need time...{also we'll conveniently ignore you when you point out that we live in a world of instant communication and that protests and strikes were coordinated decades ago when we didn't have today's technology}"
Here in Minnesota we've still been protesting every week....
“But, but, but the us country is huge. We can’t be expected to protest about something all the way over there…”
Oh, is all of Europe protesting in unity when protests are happening in Paris? i must have missed that.
With regard to point 3, 'today's technology' is very much a double edged sword. Yes, you can communicate instantly but surveillance has modernized just as much.
As reductive as it sounds, I think part of the issue is it happens all the time in other countries because it happens all the time in other countries. The connections to each other already exist. The networks already exist. All the instant communication in the world doesn't make a lick of difference if you have no idea who else to call. At this point, I feel like that's the real benefit of protests. You gotta meet like minded people somewhere to get any real momentum and third spaces are pretty fucking dead.
I don't think the issue is necessarily a lack of will to organize now, I think the issue was a lack of will to do so years ago. Hell, decades ago for that matter. So now the people that genuinely do care have to build their entire network from the ground up while under heavy surveillance which yes, is going to be fucking slower.
Easily the most genius thing I have seen in my entire life.