Of course. A leftist protest will never have support from the owner class.

The tea party protests were certainly astroturfed, funded by the coke Brothers etc. but they were also real. They were composed of real people with real grievances.

I don’t think they would admit their actual motivations even to themselves, but it wasn’t a fake movement in the sense that the crowds were fictional. Thousands and tens of thousands of people were showing up and calling reps and voting in primaries.

I agree that it is absolutely inadequate.

Ah yes, no true scottsman would protest for the billionaires!

Define “a bit”

Bodycameras on law enforcement were widely adopted after the George Floyd Protests.

To quote contra points: I no longer hope for good things.

Republicans struggle to win governor in Kentucky and Dems struggle to win anything else.

First of all, screw the Democrats they are not left wing. They are center right shitlibs, with a few milqtoast standouts like Bernie and AOC.

Second. You correctly look at democrats and see they are just Republicans lite, but your mistake is in thinking that going further left leads to greater power to the state to curtail speech, thought, and action. The left wants liberation. Economic and social. The power of government to celurtail speech is not liberation, it’s oppression.

Is it worse than the first term?

Yes. Trump didn’t think he would win the first time. He had no plan for what do do if he won, so he leaned hard on institutional knowledge of party stalwarts and military people, along with a few trusted insiders from his campaign, but they didn’t know how Washington worked.

This time hard core ideologues from the Heritage foundation were ready. They are tired of democracy and limits on the power of wealth so they are dismantling it with project 2025.

Why are legal people being kicked out?

Trump has only a few actual policies he cares about and one is to stop brown people from imigrating to live in America. This is also a test case of his own power. Because if he can disappear green card holders without due process he can also get rid of citizens that are a threat to his power.

He is getting ready for a night of long knives and a krystalnaght.

When is it time to consider leaving?

Depends. If you are an anti Israel green card holder with a history of organizing college campus protests you should probably pack your bags and make your way to the nearest airport.

If you are a citizen or permanent resident you have to make a judgement about what you are giving up, where you can go, and how likely we are to go full 3rd Reich.

I will say that if we declare war on Canada or Mexico, you should probably make your way to the other one unless you want to stay and fight it out.

Calling it now, Fetterman is going to switch parties.

Maybe not soon, but someday.

Seniors could be dying of hunger on state capitol steps and they would be saying “it’s just a few bodies, they were old anyway”

Yeah all 50 states is crazy. New York and Cali have enough people to get a protest going at the drop of a pin.

Texas has Austin, you get protests there. East coast cities, Chicago, you can get protests.

But there are dozens of states that just don’t have that kind of energy or population density, but they do now.

There have been dozens.

They need to understand that they are fighting for the country. And when they don’t treat the Republicans and billionaires as the enemy they deprive us of the power to fight at the ballot box.

So we have to go to the soapbox. Like lemmy.

And when that fails, many of us (not me) will find they have nothing else to lose and go to the ammo box, like mangione is accused of.

And the rest of us will go to the jury box and vote not guilty.

Ah, I am not educated on their current status. Only their actions in the 1980’s.

His treatment caused about . 02% of the support for him.

United Heaths treatment of the rest of us caused the rest.

They were elected after they murdered the opposition.

Would you vote against the guys that would rape your wife and kids while you watch and then lock you all in a burning building?

The guys that have the support of the US government and the CIA?

Really sounds like you are arguing in favor of those ideological reasons.

I’m not saying we should take the fortunes of the rich and light them on fire. (Though there would be benefits even to that destructive approach)

Sure, eating the rich would not solve all our problems forever. It would solve some immediate problems today, and future generations would need to grapple with their problems tomorrow.

“We can’t change things! There would be costs!” There are costs to inaction. We are paying them every day.

You are trying to scare me, an American, by saying that if Europe keeps going the way they are going someday they might be as terrible a place to live as America.

That’s better odds than my current reality. I’m guaranteed to live in a country no social safety net and a constrained fiscal environment because that describes America right fucking now.

Again, we should be so lucky.

Yes they were.

I do in fact wish we had European problems. That would be a massive upgrade. We should be so lucky.