I’m an American who has been living abroad for 20 years. I’m shocked, as I watch my home country being dismantled by oligarchs who sold US democracy. And I talk to other Americans and they’re just like “Oh, well, both sides, you know?”
Do y’all not realize what you’ve done? The US literally has no allies now, no rule of law, and no democracy. You’re living in an authoritarian dictatorship now, run by clowns.
How are so many Americans just going on with their lives like normal?
Bread, circuses and two minutes of hate.
Exactly. The point of all the forever wars and having the CIA overthrow legitimate governments was all in service of bread and circuses.
Even ostensibly “liberal” people are still sucked way more into their personal lives and their “dreams” than they are what is actually happening. I said to my mother recently that she has been “playing house” while the country has been falling apart around her for decades and that all she “did for her kids” was for nothing because she never stepped up to make sure the country didn’t fall apart, thinking that as long as she made enough money and got her kids a good enough education it would “save them.” She spent her life making me feel like her stupid fucking six-bedroom house with a pool that she lived in alone was more important than my life, especially with how much she bitched at me to get a job, any job, any time I was struggling, including when I got fucking cancer. I pointed out that she herself could have been in a much better financial position if instead of selfishly living in it alone she could have been renting out rooms or the whole damn basement to others at reasonable prices and helping alleviate the homeless problem instead patting herself on the back for giving a homeless person ten bucks. All I got were excuses and explanations and no accepting that maybe, jut maybe, she could have been more involved in politics or more compassionate in opening up her home. She even balked at the idea of me suggesting that she ought to be getting ready to Anne Frank this shit and prepare the house to house people who need to hide from Trump’s fucking goons. I said cool, so you’ll be remembered as a Nazi because you’re complicit in being too fucking selfish to share your house with people who literally might be murdered or deported. Your ass would have kicked Anne Frank and her family into the street. Needless to say, whole conversation did not go well. The boomers were so privileged and coddled that they literally got to achieve their dreams while choosing to ignore things like politics entirely.
These people are out of touch and fuck-nothing is going to wake them up. It’s going to take fascists on their doorstep coming for them and by then it’s way way too fucking late.
Instead of a traditional circus with tamed tigers and acrobats, the US has the unorthodox one, run by crazy clowns.
People have to eat.
Fundamentally the US is broken, and people don’t have themselves to support themselves very long.
Medical debt can wipe out your meager gains incredibly fast. The stock market tanking erases your only real savings you may have had.
Under those circumstances, it’s hard to take action when your hustling to survive.
This is actually what causes green plumbers causes now you have nothing left to lose.
Yeah. That’s the part that billionaires and health CEOs should be thinking more about. Plumbers with exceptional jumping ability are being created at a rate that should alarm them, in exchange for amounts of difference on the billionaire’s net worth that they’ll never even notice.
Social safety nets make everyone win, even the billionaires. We just have an exceptionally stupid crop of billionaires.
We didn’t do it. Russia did.
Also, we have to survive. We are all a couple paychecks from homelessness.
stop blaming russia for what america has done to itself. no one was forced to vote for trump and no one forced harris to run the worst campaign i’ve seen in 4 decades.
No they don’t. At least not in the broad populace. Blame the lack of education and critical thinking for it - it is done on purpose to keep the people docile.
I’m not a Australian and have never been to America.
It seems like I’ve experienced this feeling with America, and with Australia, more and more over the last decade.
I suspect that the answer to your question is yes, voters do not understand nor particularly care what is happening.
The vast majority of voters base their position on vibe-based reasoning. Low information voters, if you will.
Oh yeah, Australia is an authoritarian state due to… COVID laws right? Is that what you’re referring to?
COVID death camps?.. Or something?
We have an election in the next few months and our conservative party will likely win. They’re running a Trump-lite campaign around cutting government agencies.
Moreover we have always been very culturally, socially, militarily and politically aligned with the US.
For example, right now we tacitly support Ukraine but would have been very cautious in expressing that support since November last year. With our current progressive government it would be… challenging it Trump asked us to toe the line and declare Ukraine the aggressor. In a few months however I wouldn’t be surprised if our newly elected conservative government was much more willing to sing that song.
In my city last year there was a vocal group of conservatives trying to ban books at the library, and prevent the city supporting a LGBTIQ+ festival, and stoke foment over transgender people using public toilets. We import a lot of US conservative politics.
We may not seem like a particularly authoritarian country but we have ever been poised to become such. We’ve always scored very poorly on privacy, and media bias.
I’m Australian but don’t live there. It worries me how far right it’s getting. Australia being a very sporty place means transgender people in sport is a huge wedge that the Nazis can use. I’ve had to “disown” a bunch of family - including my mother, who I thought I learned my values from!
Yeah, I think it’s happening everywhere, less so in Australia than some other places.
Having a young son I often wonder about far right recruitment tactics.
There are many individuals who have upped their meds such that they do not have daily panic attacks. It’s not that people don’t know, it’s that they feel powerless. Some have gone to stand in streets with signs, only to go home to face the same problems unfixed by their actions and then have a panic attack.
Non controlled substance example, a buspar increase, additional hydroxyzine increase, and added blood pressure med. That’s not advice, that’s simply 1 example you’re not seeing happening. And it’s a common combo such that it’s pretty non-identifying, like metoprolol with baby aspirin.
The usual methods of protest are not working. And as much as people like to scream on Lemmy that old methods will work, let’s be realistic. They’re ignoring courts, laws, the us constitution, why would they listen to some “nobody” on a street in a city they don’t visit. I wish to god it were that simple but this is a new order, you’ll need new methods.
In the meantime, who do you call? There’s no customer service line where someone takes your governance complaint and offers a resolution.
Do you know anyone with any governance power at all? Most don’t.
Common reported feelings include: elephant sitting on my chest (overlapping symptom between heart attack and panic attack), feeling ready to “climb the walls”, despair, controlled fear, suffocation, among others.
The feelings are there, but to what effective actions?
Common reported feelings include: elephant sitting on my chest (overlapping symptom between heart attack and panic attack)
This is such an apt description. There is absolutely a metaphorical elephant sitting on top of all of us.
I bumped in to a guy at work the other day, he was in the building as a vendor, so not an employee of my company.
He’d stopped what he was doing to rant and rave about politics to some poor soul he’d happened upon here in the building who was clearly just humoring him.
This guy was parroting everything Trump had said to the letter. As every word from that guy’s mouth was some golden truth.
That’s a third of the country. People like that. Completely lost to ideology, incapable of independent thought. Proud that Trump is winning so hard all the time, and he is, of course, because he says he is.
Consider brexit, an idea so dumb in every way every way, and yet it happened. Many journalists pointed out how russian influence and social media formed peoples votes, how it brought out the worst side in many of my countrymen, how many regretted it almost immediately. Turns out its really easy to get stupid people to hate things.
I’m both cases my view on the people is the same: they do understand. The information has always been there and publicised. People wanted this.
We don’t like what they want and we call them dumb, but it is no easy task to effectively use propaganda on this many people. It’s also easy to label people “stupid”, which is not true. This mindset genuinely exists. America is a Trump supporting nation. UK is a Brexit supporting nation (I don’t know if current regret surveys would translate into votes, Reform has more support than ever and it is increasing, and surveys last time also predicted that the majority didn’t support Brexit).
There have been a lot of podcasts looking academically how this polarisation and thinking has come about in the last 2 decades. I’m really interested in getting to the bottom of answers of how people are so convinced like this rather than the simplistic and inaccurate conclusion that “they are all dumb”.
Turns out its really easy to get stupid people to hate things.
That’s going to be the byline of this entire era of history. Oof.
The fundamental issue really does seem to be education, which is why conservatives everywhere try to cripple and dismantle it. Conservatism in the US spearheaded anti-intellectualism, but the ideology everywhere else is not far behind; constantly appealing to the lowest common denominator. This proves that conservatism does not believe it can survive with an educated populace.
I’m guilty of calling them stupid myself, but the only thing that separates anyone from cavemen is education, and the psychopaths and narcissists of society have shown us that our education systems are not fit for purpose, and holding society back from progress. The failure in our ability to educate the majority sufficiently is one of the greatest threats we face.
I talk to other Americans and they’re just like “Oh, well, both sides, you know?”
I guess it depends on the people you are talking to . The Americans I’ve met all seemed kinda sad at what US is going through.
The Americans I know outside the US (including me and my family) are devastated at the state of the US.
The Americans I know who still live there fully agree with my sentiments, but also are coping because they have to. Some of the cope is not reading news as much, not talking about it as often, shrugging and trying to just get by. It’s not good long term but it helps get through things like this. I think that’s actually part of the point from the fascists– make things so shitty you can’t keep up the anger.
steve bannon calls it flooding the zone. it’s a classic russian trick, too. the government lashes out omnidirectionally because it’s just about seeing what the people are capable of preventing right now
Yes, as an American I understand what is happening and have known it was happening for years. I’ve done everything humanly possible to scream it from the rooftops and elect Kamala as I could. Now I’m just terrified and trying to figure out how to live with some semblance of happiness in this dictatorship because it is too late. I’ll march or fight or whatever I can but it’s pretty apparent that the insurrection act will be implemented soon.
BTW - in the people I know some put their heads in the sand, some are just depressed and others are not getting it.
friend you need to learn how to push back against administration processes. you dont do it head on. talk to your friends and get them comfortable with the idea of setting fire to things. this fight is hardly over, its just beginning.
Yes we do.
And in the meantime we still need food, shelter, medicine, and to provide for our families. Physiological needs do not stop because we’re under stress.
There are actions to be taken. Keep having the conversations you’re having. Find groups to support that can resist. Be visible and loud. Call their bluffs. Protect the vulnerable.
Don’t panic. It’s counterproductive.
Well, they knew Krasnov Trump was a TV show actor/host showman who bankrupted his casinos and still voted for him.
You’re panicking. If you want to help, stop.
Life’s a bitch and then we die. We haven’t done more than get a glimpse of the bad part yet.
This shit started when everyone started looking to the federal government to solve all their problems. Started caring only about who was President but not paying attention to who was running the schools or local governments. Looking for the easy path instead of the right or best path.
As long as we still have elections, there is still a chance to turn this country around with minimal bloodshed. But it takes actually paying attention to whom your voting for and not just voting for the letter by their name. And then holding them accountable when they fall short.
I could go on and on about all of the ways that this can still be turned around, but I’ve got work in seven hours so it’s bedtime.
There is 0 guarantee “we still have elections”. I feel like that’s the part most people seem to just assume will work out when in reality they’re working so hard to remove all roadblocks to holding sham elections or just suspending them completely
Calm down. The USA is not by any measure an “authoritarian dictatorship” with “no rule of law”. Not yet. Instead of wailing histrionics like this, Americans would do better to roll up their sleeves and do something to stop the slide.
Make sure your representatives know what you think. Get involved in local politics. Protest. Its precisely because your country is not an authoritarian dictatorship that you (still) have so many options.
It’s social media. It’s TV.
So I bounce between 3 Trump states, and much of my family is glued to Facebook. Many don’t even know how to use a browser, just apps that serve them. Others religiously watch fox, a lot of cable opinion segments, things like that. I know a kid lost in Discord and YouTube.
Also, you should see the things pastors are saying in one of their churches, in spite of what the clergy have done…
I don’t know what it’s like overseas, but again, Americans seem totally consumed by social media, which is all just algorithmic propaganda that warps their world. And Trump/Musk are literally the top of that world.
It’s only getting worse.
That really is the root issue. No amount of protest, policy, empathy, anything is going to get through as long as people are immersed in these warped views of the world, and any political opposition is completely incapable of realizing that.
Americans have been brainwashed pretty hard and worn down over the decades. They’re sick, in debt, surrounded by voices telling them that it’s their fault if they’re poor. A lot of them are living paycheck to paycheck, with little room to take some time to realise how bad the situation is, even less room for maneuvering and organising.
The system works exactly as intended and what’s happening right now is the culmination of years and years of continuous propaganda.
And many world leaders and parties are taking notes right now, it’s gonna spread pretty hard and pretty fast.
