There were over 1000 protests over the weekend. The one I went to in Surprise, AZ had almost 1000 people, in a fairly conservative area with mostly older, white demographics. I think the tide is turning.
Serious question from a clueless european here, who should they vote for?
To us on the outside, getting filtered news that trickles down, it just seems like there are no candidates. One is 79 and one is 83, where are all the young politicians? Why does the media choose to only emphasize a few of them at the time?
If you're talking age, the US just had a 60 year old run in the last election and the party that complained to no end about the elderly running for office still voted for the 80 year old. Next election, the other frontrunner is currently 58.
We had a strong 38 year old candidate in 2020 but the South collectively still doesn't like gay people enough to have him win the primary.
> We had a strong 38 year old candidate in 2020 but the South collectively still doesn't like gay people enough to have him win the primary.
That 38 year old, along with the rest of the center left candidates, all dropped out to ensure the 70 year old candidate could beat the other 70 year old candidate. "The South" had nothing to do with it.
Incorrect. Buttigieg won #1 and #2 delegates in the first two primaries of Iowa and New Hampshire. It was only at the fourth primary, South Carolina, when Biden won 6x the votes, that the Buttigieg campaign dropped realizing they had no chance because of underperformance in only the South.
The 83 year old dropped out before the election took place. Kamala Harris is 61. No spring chicken, but at least not old enough that she should've retired years ago.
The two-party system will always leave you with suboptimal choices when it comes to casting your vote, but the alternative to Trump was two decades younger.
US elections happen in two stages, a "primary" where each party decides their candidate and then the "general" where the final winner is decided. It sounds like you may only be getting news about general elections (and may have missed the news where the 83 year old ended up getting swapped out).
There are plenty of young politicians. Their parties deliberately keep them out of power. Political power in the united states gets strangely concentrated by our 2 party system in a way that tends to ossify policy and promote more ring-wing versions of both parties.
Biden was no longer a candidate even by the time the last election happened.
Look to Mamdani. Note that the real election there was in the primary. If you squint a bit, the US electoral system looks like the French one. There's two rounds of voting, and in the first one you get to pick who is the crook that will be put up against the fascist in the final round.
It's going to be boring and time consuming, but people have to use the levers they do have available to do internal Democrat party politics if they want to improve the situation.
If there's one thing both parties agree with, it's that you can't ever vote for a third party because that's effectively voting for the other major candidate. So the problem of not having more than 2 choices perpetuates indefinitely.
> If there's one thing both parties agree with, it's that you can't ever vote for a third party
Actually, both major parties (not always at the same time) have a long track record of working very hard to promote voting for third-party candidates, doing things like funneling funds covertly (or simply nudging donors) to fund their efforts, assigning party activists to support third-party efforts, etc.
Of course, they exclusively do this for third parties whose appeal is, or is expected to be, mainly to people whos preference, if choices were limited to the major parties, would be for the other major party.
Because it's not just rhetoric, as long as the electoral system isn't reformed to change this, getting people to vote for a minor party instead of your opponent like demoralizing them and getting them to stay home, or disenfranchising them (two other things the major parties have been known to try to do to populations likely to vote for their opponents otherwise) is a lot easier and exactly half as useful, per voter, as getting them to switch to you from the other major party.
That only works if the message of the third party is more appealing to those voters. And so the major party also pays attention to which third party messages from those who would support them are getting through and changes.
It is also helped because many of the people who are insiders in the major party are secretly voting for the third party when the majority of primary voters (who are rarely well informed) force someone they don't like on the party. They can't do anything this time, but they can send a message to each other where they failed.
> That only works if the message of the third party is more appealing to those voters.
It actually works just as well if the third party fails to attract the voters with its message but provides a reason not to vote for the targeted major party candidate that would not work as well if the messenger was the major party using the third party as a stalking horse. Because discouraging voters that would otherwise vote for the other party has the exact same effect on the outcome as moving them to a minor party.
Whichever choice has the least favour is malleable. Right now, by switching up their candidates and policies, the democrats can't do any worse than they're already doing, which is losing. If the democrats next time, then the republicans will have 4 years with nothing to lose.
It's worth noting that Renee Good was shot because she was protesting after she happened upon ICE operating in her city. More than just weekend protests are happening. Few people in any of the blue sanctuary cities ICE is terrorizing actually want ICE to be there and those who don't frequently make themselves heard, sometimes resulting in their tragic end.
Yes, some protests happen when it's convenient for the protesters. That does not invalidate their protests, nor any others with a similar message. It does not weaken the message nor the movement.
> If you compare this to what is happening in Iran, US citizens are docile.
This is still moot. Even if they appear such (even if they are such) it does not diminish the validity nor righteousness of their message.
> A "peaceful protest" is an oxymoron.
This is false by a plain understanding of the words. A "protest" is an expression against something. "Peaceful" means nonviolent. Obviously expressions can be nonviolent.
I think the problem is just how big the US is. People outside of the US really don't understand this. For instance, I'm about 2300 miles from DC, also known as 3700 km. It just not logistically possible for me to march on the capital. I do what I can locally, a lot of us do, but with everything so spread out, it is hard to make an impact.
I don't know if it's fair to say we're chilling - there have been fairly organized (although admittedly not very large) protests around the nation related to the killing of Nicole Renee Good. I live in southern California and there were at least 6 within easy driving distance this past weekend.
Whenever ICE goes into a new city, they're meeting more and more community resistance. The protestors have mostly been very smart about remaining civil, which continues making ICE look worse and worse as they tear gas and arrest peaceful protestors.
The supreme court has ruled (somewhat surprisingly) that Trump can't deploy the National Guard into cities any longer.
Trump's approval rating has continued steadily declining since he took office, and the midterms are shaping up to be a bloodbath.
I'm mid-40s and this is the best-organized and most successful demonstration movement I've witnessed in my lifetime. Occupy got close, but that felt like something that the more 'extreme' ones were actively participating in, with more passive support from the populace. Now it feels like everyone is getting directly involved in one way or another.
I understand protesting ICE for better accountability, they certainly need to be held accountable. But I don't understand those who protest the presence of ICE as a concept. Are there any countries that don't enforce their immigration laws?
You can enforce immigration laws without shooting people in the face, ramming into their vehicles, ripping them out and putting them in illegal chokeholds, shipping them to prisons in El Salvador, firing tear gas at legal observers and on and on.
It also wasn't an agency prior to 9/11. It should be dissolved. All ERO agents should be prosecuted and or barred from all future public service.
It was born out of INS but it and DHS have its roots in the security apparatus that developed thereafter. It's become progressively worse leading up to the weaponization we're seeing now.
A protest movement can't be very subtle. A clear and short message like "No ICE" or "ICE Out" is much preferable to "We would like an immigrations and and custom enforcement agency that respects people and the law, efficiently inspects imports, checks in on visa overstayers, pursues charges against business owners that have a business practice of not checking work eligibility of new hires, and works with competent, trained agencies to perform traffic stops and home/office raids or trains their own officers for such"
but it's directionally wrong. It's like the BLM protests that had main messages of abolishing the police - those had terrible consequences [1]. "Reform" would be a better direction.
A time honored protest chant is "hey hey, ho ho, [target of protest] has got to go." That's just how protests work --- don't like what someone or an agency is doing, march to get rid of them. Getting rid of them may not be achievable or desirable, but it resonates.
Given the number of high profile shootings related to totally unnecessary situations the agency has put its agents into with apparently zero preparation and training, it's not surprising that people want it to go. I don't remember this kind of thing when INS was doing activities with the same kinds of reported goals.
ICE has been turned into a secret police force. If you'd like a history of the border patrol in the US, then here is an excellent introduction: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DdStIvC8WeE
Years ago, this book provided me with a useful introduction to the history of immigration to the United States and various crackdowns (vigilante and official) against it.
It's not a difficult read, but its authors are leftists and the language may sometimes be difficult for readers with sensitivities related to the goodness of Democrats or Republicans or whatever.
(I think maybe I'll re-read it today as well; it's been a long time.)
ICE as an agency was created in 2003. Most of the posters here are older than it by a significant factor. We can live without it and create another agency to enforce immigration laws that isn't thoroughly rotted and filled with criminals.
Yes, but it's essentially just a re-branded INS (Immigration and Naturalization Service). They were conducting raids to catch undocumented immigrants (often at workplaces) for as long as I can remember (i.e. back into the early 1980's). IIRC, spanish speakers called them "la migra".
My libertarian philosophy is not compatible with immigration laws in general. I'm not quite let everyone in - but I require strong reason to not let someone in. People should have the right to move, only restricted in the worst cases.
> Are there any countries that don't enforce their immigration laws?
I don't think there are many developed countries where their immigration officers are routinely tear gassing students and bystanders, no. I don't think there are many developed countries where their immigration officers are detaining indigenous peoples in private, for-profit detention centers without charging them with any kind of crime.
Feel free to point out other developed countries where this is now just a routine occurrence though.
The argument about getting rid of ICE isn't about having zero enforcement of immigration laws. It is about getting rid of this entire stack of management and agents. I guess that's what you're not understanding.
ICE is recent. We don't need ICE, the organization and people that are currently doing what they're doing, to continue to be a part of the government. If the whole organization is behaving badly, the whole organization should be scrapped and a new organization with different people and a different plan and enforcement style should be created.
ICE was created in 2003. We had immigration enforcement actions happen well before 2003. Getting rid of ICE does not mean "no longer enforce immigration laws".
I see, I can understand the argument better now, thanks!
Looking it up, it seems that ICE used to be part of INS, which was broken up into:
-USCIS: Handles services (green cards, citizenship).
-CBP: Handles the borders (Border Patrol and ports of entry).
-ICE: Handles interior enforcement (raids, investigations, and deportations).
So I'm not really sure I follow. If we get rid of ICE, who handles Handles interior enforcement (raids, investigations, and deportations)? Another org?
This feels like people who argue to get rid of the police, and replace it with "Community Security Forces", or something of the likes.
> If we get rid of ICE, who handles Handles interior enforcement (raids, investigations, and deportations)? Another org?
Yes, a different org, back under the Department of Justice, staffed by very different people and with a different way of going about enforcement of immigration law. I'd argue there have been a lot of issues with the Department of Homeland Security and that massive parts of the organization should probably be reworked.
The DHS' mission is supposedly all about protecting people from terrorist attacks, go read the arguments on why it was a good thing right after it was created to see that kind of connection[0]. Why do we have an organization designed to fight terrorists in charge of handling civil infractions? Its no wonder we have agents treating everyone as a terrorist; its what the department is supposed to focus on, fighting terrorists! Its almost like maybe we should have a different group of agents equipped to handle potential terrorist threats to the agents making sure foreigners aren't overstaying visas or working while not authorized to work.
In another direction but related to this, we should also pretty much scrap and redo all of our immigration laws as well. They really don't work well and are generally pretty bad. Note I'm not saying we should have no immigration laws at all, but the systems we have today are largely dumb, ineffective, and just end up hurting a lot of people while not really doing much good for the American people.
> This feels like people who argue to get rid of the police, and replace it with "Community Security Forces", or something of the likes.
A lot of what the police do these days probably should be re-tasked to different, potentially new agencies with different trainings and different focuses. Police these days are expected to handle such a wide range of community issues, many of which probably don't need the same kind of people who respond to violent threats and what not. When someone is experiencing a mental health crisis we probably shouldn't send people who spend their days training to perceive every action as a threat to be handled with a gun as the first line responder. When there's someone on the street strung out on drugs having the police respond and put them in jail/prison probably isn't helping the situation.
> In what countries do undercover police drive marked vehicles and wear insignia of their agency?
Tons of these ICE agents are in unmarked vehicles and wear no official insignia. The guy who shot Renee Good did not, on any part of his body or exposed gear, actually have ICE insignia on him.
It saddens me that your rather innocuous comment has been down-voted so aggressively. Immigration enforcement is required. Illegal immigration should be discouraged. ICE's current tactics seem overly aggressive to me and, yes, seem to be used politically. But immigration laws should still be enforced. I imagine you'd agree that if ICE agents/supervisors act beyond the scope of their duties or with excessive force, they should be disciplined/prosecuted. I also have a hard time understanding people who don't agree with what I just wrote. I can only imagine those that want to disagree think I'm writing with some sort of underlying agenda and in code to push some broader political narrative (I'm not).
It may appear innocuous yet it normalizes ICE's actions as mere "immigration enforcement". Their actions are far more and far worse than that, as you note:
> ICE's current tactics seem overly aggressive to me and, yes, seem to be used politically.
It is not an issue of immigration laws being enforced, it is an issue of rights being infringed. The "overly aggressive" tactics being "used politically" is exactly the problem.
> ICE's current tactics seem overly aggressive to me and, yes, seem to be used politically. But immigration laws should still be enforced.
Yeah, it's strange that this take is so polarizing.
> I imagine you'd agree that if ICE agents/supervisors act beyond the scope of their duties or with excessive force, they should be disciplined/prosecuted.
Yes of course, it's hard to disagree with that.
>It saddens me that your rather innocuous comment has been down-voted so aggressively.
Despite the ridiculous narrative that Obama and Biden were "bringing in illegals en masse to vote for Democrats," if you look at the actual numbers, it's not surprising that folks are down-voting that comment.
Mostly because those previous administrations (Obama and Biden) managed to deport many more undocumented folks than either this or the previous Trump administration, without the thuggery, violence and murder we're seeing now.
I'd note that even without the gratuitous violence and intimidation, folks were also protesting Obama's and Biden's ICE activities.
Because the real issue around immigration in the US is that our system is broken and we haven't constructively addressed those problems for nearly 40 years.
So no. I'm not surprised by the down-votes because there's nuance that's being glossed over and, while doing so, giving violent thugs a pass by claiming that they're "enforcing the law," even though they're doing a crap job while harming our citizens, legal residents and helping to destroy what's left of our civil society.
I'm not pushing any "broader political narrative" either. Just pointing out a few things not mentioned in your or GP's comments.
It's like you didn't see where I agree that current enforcement is too aggressive. Why are you writing in a tone that implies we disagree when we agree? This is the sort of thing that confuses me.
>It's like you didn't see where I agree that current enforcement is too aggressive. Why are you writing in a tone that implies we disagree when we agree? This is the sort of thing that confuses me.
I combined my response to your comment[0] and its parent[1], as I mentioned:
I'm not pushing any "broader political narrative" either. Just pointing out a
few things not mentioned in your or GP's comments.
Rather than disagreeing with you, I was attempting to add nuance and additional substance. As the site guidelines[2] recommend:
Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone
says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.
You appear to have assumed bad faith on my part. Why is that? Was I not clear enough? What could I have added to the above to be clearer?
C.J. Cregg: Leo, we need to be investigated by someone who wants to kill us just to watch us die. We need someone perceived by the American people to be irresponsible, untrustworthy, partisan, ambitious, and thirsty for the limelight. Am I crazy, or is this not a job for the U. S. House of Representatives?
Leo McGarry: Well, they'll get around to it sooner or later.
C.J. Cregg: So let's make it sooner - let's make it now.
Watch it. Best TV show I can think of, ever. By that I mean that the writing and acting and production values are top notch; it's entertaining throughout - some of the other greats are not (The Wire falls down here, sometimes; Keislowski's Dekalog, likewise - though its best moments are better than anything else); and Andor nails its cultural moment, by being directly about, well, all of the Important Stuff we're talking about in this thread. Also, it's a tragedy; it's about sacrifice and loss, and the human consequences of following your convictions - regardless of the side you choose. (That last note's a personal taste, but I'd stand by the former points as being reasonably objective.)
I sat through it going, "how the hell did they manage to make a work of art out of a Star Wars series?", which even makes it better. You don't have to care about Star Wars AT ALL to appreciate Andor, but if you do, watching Andor -> Rogue One -> Originals back to back makes the earlier stuff better.
You'll think I'm over-selling it. Please watch it, then come back and tell me I'm wrong.
I live in Seattle and I've seen multiple large protests around the ICE murder of Renee Good. Part of the problem is that the US is too large as the people responsible for the jackbooted thugs kicking in doors and killing citizens are on the other side of the country. Business in Minneapolis is practically grinding to a halt as stores and businesses close their door out of fear.
I think we're one or two bad incidents away from wide-scale rioting.
> Why has this analogy been repeated so much lately?
Probably because a country that was famous for trying to spread their idea of "freedom" all across the world, seemingly can't notice themselves that the country is rapidly declining into full on authoritarian dictatorship, with a very skewed perspective of "freedom", and the people who are opposing it, aren't rioting (yet at least).
The judicial arm of the government aren't even enforcing the laws of the country anymore! Not sure how, but it'll get worse before it gets better. Quite literally a fitting analogy in this case.
We're actually dumber than the frogs. The original 19th century experiment involving frogs that didn't jump out of heated water was using frogs who had had their brains destroyed. The question being asked was whether the escape reaction to hot water was caused by the brain or by something further down in the nervous system. With an intact brain, the frogs would jump out. Without one, they wouldn't. Question answered.
It's just a simple analogy that quickly breaks down.
The frogs have it easy. All they have to do is jump out. One individual action and they're safe. (Until the scientist catches them and uses them in more experiments, anyway.)
The situation for people living under governments becoming gradually more oppressive is much more complicated. You don't know for sure that the water will keep heating up. Escape is extremely difficult and costly. Turning off the heat takes massive collective action. A third of the frogs actively want the water to boil, and another third don't really care.
Maybe that's a strong element, but I think we are simply too addicted to comfort and our way of life. We've been encouraged to "just vote" for so long we've lost all political muscle.
The only problem is that in the US, if you let apartments and townhouses to be built, homeowners will get muscled out by large builder concerns and single family homes will be converted into dense housing--which sounds great, until you realize there's no way those housing concerns will SELL those units--they're going to be rented forever. There's no incentive to actually sell those to people and every reason to keep them as rentable apartments forever.
So you have attractive locations being completely dominated by rentable corporate owned housing and the net outcome is that people are completely boxed out of home ownership. There's no way pricing comes down because they do this in areas where people are willing to pay top dollar to live.
I live near Ann Arbor and we're seeing it play out right now--more dense housing in the inner core is being allowed (as current thinking says should be done) and whats happening is that smaller old-timey landlords and homeowners are being pushed out and their homes and apartment buildings are being replaced with brand new high dollar rentals. Not condos (although there are some of those as well, but fewer), rentals. And the rental prices are going up! Normal people get pushed further and further from the attractive areas to live, and pressure from these people moving out pushes up rent in the surrounding areas.
Usually it means that supply gets bought up and converted (and leaves the supply, often).
The desire is that a row of single family homes (say a block has 10) get slowly redeveloped into a row of brownstones or similar density - but they're still single family and owned by the residents, but now you have 20 in the same space, or 30. You can triple the density and not really change anything else.
But what ends up happening is that the single family homes remain single family, get slowly bought up by a developer and rented, and then the entire block gets turned into an apartment complex, perhaps with the same or even more units, but they're all rentals forever.
This might be fine, and perhaps even encouraged in some areas, but it does reduce the supply of homes to buy.
I mean, they could, but there's no incentive for the builders to sell them. You can make way more money with rentals (if the demand is there) then you can with condos. Condos are a way time hit of money, rentals are smaller profit, but comes reliably.
Right now holding rental apartments is a "good deal" and they'll have buyers for that (the builders don't want to hold anything usually, they want to sell, sell, sell and get building the next thing) - just larger institutional buyers.
When the market turns around (and every time in the past it was "only going up" it eventually ended) then suddenly you have apartment complexes turning into condos to sell off capital and stop the bleeding.
The problem for people "on the ground/in the rentals" is that can force you to act when you're not financially prepared to - it's easy to find situations where someone can afford the rent; even afford the mortgage to BUY the apartment as a condo; but cannot afford the downpayment (or otherwise qualify for the loan).
You're right. It doesn't matter though. People love 'big fixes', the reality of systemic change is hard to present in a 2 minute sound bite or Instagram reel. This is the kind of 'fix' that gets implemented, then when things don't magically improve people will just give up.
They’re already straining to truck in enough water for survival now WITH some of the wells still working. If the ability to source water locally stops the people of Tehran will either need to move or die. With aquifers running dry from iran to Afghanistan they’ll have to migrate even further. I think we could see the entire region plunge further into chaos as the water crisis worsens.
That's just a Western pipe dream. The water crisis could trigger a revolt but the fundamentals for such revolt have to be there rather than the water crisis being the sole reason.
> people of Tehran will either need to move or die
No. I've lived (along a million other people) without water for many months during a hot summer episode. It was a major lifestyle degradation (and major doesn't even begin to describe it) but death was not a threat (though there was fear of disease spread due to possible degradation of sanitary conditions but that didn't happen either).
In 10 years there won’t be a regime in Iran because Iran won’t exist as it does today. With the collapsing water table people are going to be forced into either death or migration.
I don’t want to be a doom and gloom guy, but the climate change collapse is starting to happen in front of our eyes—and not just in a far off ‘eventually this will be a problem’ way.
A major factor, but also include aging infrastructure and population growth. The giant data centres around the world are going to use up high amounts of water and electricity.
“The government blames the current crisis on changing climate [but] the dramatic water security issues of Iran are rooted in decades of disintegrated planning and managerial myopia,” says Keveh Madani, a former deputy head of the country’s environment department and now director of the United Nations University’s Institute of Water, Environment and Health.
...
While failed rains may be the immediate cause of the crisis, they say, the root cause is more than half a century of often foolhardy modern water engineering — extending back to before the country’s Islamic revolution of 1979, but accelerated by the Ayatollahs’ policies since.
There is more water in Iran than before global warming, not less. Oh and in other places where there is less water due to global warming, like Spain, there is no water shortage.
Sorry but this one is just 100% the fault of the government involved. It could have easily been prevented and it was known to the month when it would happen decades in advance, nothing was done.
It’s because this is a very simplified view of a classroom. What is presented above is the best case scenario, not a realistic one. For example, there’s no consideration of costs associated with any sort of handicapped student, or student with special education needs.
Real world costs completely spiral out of control when you look at the actual system—for example, the buildings are all built during the rapid expansion of the country so are now old enough to need expensive maintenance, and there isn’t money or interest from the community to tear them down and build new ones.
Also something else that isn’t being covered is that involved parents are pulling their kids out for home schooling, and well behaved kids are increasingly being pulled out and put in charter sschools. This is leading to a rapid collapse of the school system. Public school is being left as a place for students who’s parents don’t care enough to do anything with them, or with enough behavioral or special needs that charter schools won’t handle them.
I’m an American and I can safely vouch that myself and most of the people I know deeply believe in the American ideals that have been presented as gospel for decades—fair play, hard work, rule of law, loving our neighbors (regardless of legal status), and to a one, believe that as soon as you swear your oath at the immigration court, you’re an American, regardless of the circumstances of your birth.
The situation we find ourselves in is that the American of today does not represent us well. I have hopes for the future, but time will tell.
> and I can safely vouch that myself and most of the people I know
That's great, too bad none of those people sit in positions of power or anywhere near your government, because from the outside for the last two decades or more, those ideals are not visible to us at all, neither when we look at the foreign policy nor internal.
I'm sure the tides will eventually turn, but we're talking decades more likely than years, since it's been turning this direction for decades already, and I don't see it tipping the balance in the other way even today or the near-future. GLHF at the very least, I do hope things get better for everyone.
Yeah, that is something I don't get. You can hear all around the Internet "we did not vote of this!" yet you don see any visible reaction to all these bad decisions lately - no protests in the streets, no real attempts to block these things, people resigning rather then implementing bad decisions.
I just don't get it - unless all those ideals were just a show from the start.
I'm not sure what the purpose is to go out on the streets for half a day, then everyone goes back inside and continue like nothing ever happen?
Go out, stay out until change is enacted. It's called striking, and if you had any sort of good unions, they'd be planning a general strike for a long time, and it should go on until you get change.
You know, like how other "modern" countries do it when the politicians forget who they actually work for.
I'm not sure if you're mixing things, or if I missed anything, but the "No Kings" things were protests, not a "strike" and very far from being a "general strike". Those practices are very different from just "protesting".
Employers can fire you in the US for general strikes. You're only protected if you're striking for grievances against the company, not for solidarity actions. Indeed, unions can be dissolved for it.
Add in how large the US is, it's population size, distribution, how far most people live from Washington D.C. and a cultural knee-jerk response to anything remotely seen as bullying of digging their heels in or fight back means they're far, far more difficult to do effectively here than in "modern" countries.
> Employers can fire you in the US for general strikes. You're only protected if you're striking for grievances against the company, not for solidarity actions. Indeed, unions can be dissolved for it.
Yeah, but thankfully, solidarity kind of solves that, as people fired from their jobs because they're striking would be supported by the community. But, if the country doesn't have a history of having built such a community, often with big help from socialist and left-leaning groups, the options you have available today are kind of few.
But best day for it is today, even if yesterday wasn't very good.
The "No Kings" protest had absolutely no subject or issue other than repeating Trump's name. What would it have meant for it to have been successful? What I mean by that is what could "X" be in the sentence: "If X policy had changed, the No Kings rallies would have accomplished one of their goals"?
It was just an astroturfed Democratic party rally that drummed up participation by mass text spam from Indian call centers. The turnout was positively geriatric.
Incidentally, the Democratic Party has started running into a severe issue with text spammers and fake orgs asking for donations and raking in millions, and the people doing it are people who are actually involved with the party.
Those Constant Texts Asking You to Donate to Democrats Are Scams
People in the US seems allergic to unions and any sort of solidarity movements, so now you have all these individuals believing them to be the strongest individual, not realizing you need friends and grass-root movements to actually have any sort of civil opposition.
There does seem to be some slight improvements of this situation as of late, video game companies and other obvious sectors getting more unions. But still, even on HN you see lots of FUD about unions, I'm guessing because of the shitty state of police unions and generally the history of unions in the US, but there really isn't any way out of the current situation without solidarity across the entire working class and middle class in the US, even if they're right, left, center or purple.
> The situation we find ourselves in is that the American of today does not represent us well.
The thing the person you're replying to points out is that, while you may be earnest in your comment and representative of a majority of US citizen, that is not how the US as a country has worked for a very long time, and it was possible because you and your fellow citizen were either too ignorant or not involved enough.
I'll simply point to the history of Central and South America as evidence of my claim.
Look, we can all acknowledge that there were, and are, many Americans who wish for this to be true. But at no point in America's history did that "many" ever constitute a majority. Or even close to it.
Which is why, from its very inception, the US has employed mass genocide at home, invasions & regime changes in the America's, then post-slavery apartheid at home, with invasions & regime changes in the rest of the world.
That's not anti-American rhetoric. That's just historical fact.
So, commingled with those facts, where does "law, love & fair play" come in. If you're honest, THAT was the propaganda. And the above realities, that was the truth.
The America of today IS the America it has always been. Its just that the propaganda mask can't be reattached with more duct tape. America started by geniciding non-whites at home, and rounding up & dragging non-whites TO America, in chains.
Now it's genociding non-whites abroad (primarily the Middle East), and rounding up & dragging non-whites FROM America, in chains.
When you focus on the common threads throughout American history, and strip away the fluff, you realise ... that's the real America (which still has the largest slave labour force in the world, through indentured workforces via its prison system).
I'm not even sure it was never a majority. I'm not even sure it's not a majority now. It's more that the system is not set up to be good, even if the majority wants it to be.
I think both can be true. The problem is that there are many people who believe as you do, but the system is set up in such way that those people are dissuaded from gaining power and influence, while the most machiavellian and amoral find an easy path.
As a seventh generation American, war veteran who has been in public service for 22 of my 25 working years and mixed race person, America has literally never organizationally been any of the things you describe.
We are a nation of selfish, narcissists that have no concept of consistent long lasting care based communities.
What little care we give each other is mediated through transactions or cult based social alignment.
Any nation made up of human beings is going to be flawed. The way forward is via incremental change and compromise. Forcing societal change does not, and never has, worked.
It looks like Musk was able to buy Twitter and, together with the other media magnates, force a massive societal change in USA. At least from the outside looking in, before this year USA seemed to be a democracy (with some factions doing their best to subvert that) and the Constitution seemed to be a widely supported basis for that democracy. But now, the Constitution has been torn to shreds and seemingly with massive support from people who will call sand wet and water dry if Trump tells them communists don't agree with it and that his clever uncle told him so.
The fallacy is believing the country has ever perfectly embodied the principals of its people. Unlike your and others dismissive talk of my 'bright eyed idealism' I and the people that I interact with fully understand the missteps and failures of our country.
That does not stop us from working towards making the nation a better place. I'm stubborn and loud and I talk to politicians and others when I see things that I don't think are right. Maybe (probably) I'm tilting at windmills. But I'm not giving up on what I think the United States should be.
The fallacy is believing that people have principals. A country is in essence people and the failure of a country is atomically identical to failure in people. When you blame the "country" you are blaming people, aka yourself.
The bright eyed idealism I refer to is the failure to recognize that when you look at your own country you are looking in a mirror.
It's not only that. The type of patriotism that people have in the US is unlike any other. No offense but the only word I can use to describe it is utter arrogance, like the US is a synonym for Utopia and the US is humanities best attempt ever at it. You see patriotism in other countries in the sense that "I love my country" but you don't see it in the sense that "My country is the greatest" like you see with Americans.
I mean to be fair you do get governments who try to get people to think that their country is the greatest but none of the citizenry really buy into it (think: North Korea). But for America, a large number of people literally think America is the greatest and this is what is unique about American patriotism. You embody it.
I assume marketing. I’m wondering what will happen when they force the afghan refugees back over the border into Afghanistan since they don’t have the water to give them.
Climate change and bad decisions from the last 50 years are starting to bite now. It’ll just get worse. Expect migrations and countries collapsing as millions of people are pushed to migrate for survival.
The drinking water is just part of the issue (as you said). Water is used in countless industrial processes, farming, EVERYTHING. if the water goes, so does everything else.
And it’s not just water going away—it’s impingement by salt as well.
> Drinking water is such a tiny proportion of total water use
A lot of water infrastructure needs minimum levels to function. Drinking water may be a small fraction of use. But if the big users deplete a reservoir below its minimum operational level, the fact that the dead water is enough to keep Tehran alive is more trivia than solace.
> Climate change and bad decisions from the last 50 years are starting to bite now. It’ll just get worse. Expect migrations and countries collapsing as millions of people are pushed to migrate for survival.
For those unfamiliar, climate change and drought are believed to be one of the major causes of the bronze age civilization collapse
People speculate climate change and drought are one of the causes for every major collapse in history. It's even likely, because people keep fighting the collapse until something forces their hands, and that's one recurrent big thing to trigger change.
That said, we never had the climate change that strongly on history.
In Iran the cause of the water shortage is at least 99.9% the current government's policies. If global warming accelerated matters it was by days or weeks probably.
But you have to admit it would be very funny if a theocracy was forced to abandon it's capital by forces of nature.
Old techniques like Qanats and Shabestans aren't going to help Iranians deal with effluents in the water, or straight-up water misuse by businesses controlled by the Ayatollahs.
Look, I know they didn’t fare well against Israeli F-35s and American B-2s, but the tech disparity isn’t quite as bad as them using Super Soakers for air defense.
Ten million civilians are about to deeply suffer. A multi-year drought is a key contributor.
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