I don't understand what it's going to take for someone to do something. Protests are not going to work when they're holding all our money, services, rights, data, etc hostage, and threatening all our public servants. We already had a hard time protesting before this, because health care is tied to employment. It's not a coincidence that they're going after Medicare and Medicaid. They want an entire nation of indentured servants. Unable to own anything, including our own freedom. When we can't work anymore we can just go die in the wilderness like animals I guess. Hmm where have we heard that before?
Everyone is terrified and exhausted. It seems pretty evident that the election was outright stolen, and I have a hard time believing nobody in power suspected something that many of us immediately called, not with the mountains of evidence that's been stacking up for months, years even. So why didn't they do anything? Why did they wait until Trump was sworn in to even talk about it?
I see Canadians online talking about Americans like we chose this. But we didn't, it was forced upon us, and we're begging for help! Who can we turn to if not our allies? What is going on???
Edit: To those claiming that I'm just as bad as the J6ers, that the election was not tampered with and Harris just ran a terrible campaign; whether unwittingly or not, you are part of the problem. You're falling for the suppression and misinformation tactics, or you're facilitating them. I'm editing my comment to compile some links, but let me be clear, I fully expect that you're going to deny these facts as well, and move the goalposts again. My refusal to engage is not a concession, it's me protecting what little emotional energy I have left.
Yes, this is what NATO is for. It is an alliance meant to prevent fascism from taking hold. Just because it's only ever been used in non member countries doesn't mean it can't be used on us, especially if Trump continues to threaten allies. Talking about this leading to WWIII is a strawman argument. You don't know that will happen and it is not a good reason to not be asking for help from our allies. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/NATO
To those who think comparisons to Hitler and Nazi Germany are hyperbole:
I fully expect that some of the bad actors from reddit are here as well. For anyone else reading this: Question their motives. If they're trying to deny what we can see with our own eyes, their intentions are not good.
To those claiming ... that the election was not tampered with
I will agree that there was targeted voter suppression, targeted registration purges, and Russian propaganda. But all of this has been around for many elections. It's wrong that we have to live with this in the US, but it's already been challenged in court, largely unsuccessfully. So we do have to live with it, until it can be fixed by a legislature that actually works for the people.
Even if you could prove voting machine tampering sufficient to change the election, there's still the problem that 77 million voters chose catastrophe. You can't possibly prove that this was off by an order of magnitude. We have to face the reality that there is an excess of bad voters, and a shortage of good candidates.
Thanks for this. Anytime I talk about these things to folks outside the US, it's always some reply about "your country chose this!" And how, regardless of how I voted, I still somehow let this happen. It's super frustrating and disheartening. Now, it is the cool thing to be super anti-American.
This country has a huge population of people who are terrified and strictly opposed to what is happening. Once you decide: "Fuck the US," you're turning your back on millions of Americans that did not want this to happen and did what they could do stop it. We need help in our resistance. Please don't abandon us.
I hear you. Americans in general aren't our (Canada's) enemy, but your President is, along with those who voted for him (and to a lesser extent, those who did not vote), and I have much less sympathy for the "leopards ate my face" crowd during Trump's second term than his first, since he made it very well known what kind of charlatan he was.
I hear you, friend. Just remember, they don't live here. They haven't experienced the calculated dismantling of our education system. They haven't seen the meteoric rise of Christian nationalism. They don't know how sick and tired the general population is. Social safety nets are more robust in their countries, so they don't have nearly the same number of racist, angry, lead addled boomers managing to gain a chokehold on every aspect of our daily lives.
But we do live here, we have experienced it, and you are not alone.
Anytime I talk about these things to folks outside the US, it’s always some reply about “your country chose this!” And how, regardless of how I voted, I still somehow let this happen. It’s super frustrating and disheartening.
The way i see it, the current disasters unfolding were predictable as far back as the 1960s. Unhinged greed is a disease, and letting it run free and calling it "progress", "economic liberalism", and channeling it to make it your main way of doing economy, is a disease. What's angering me personally is that it seems to me that Americans are so extremely short-sighted, that as long as it worked for them, everything was ok in their eyes, and now that they're hitting the wall, they suddenly want to get off the vehicle. Good planning takes a long time, and even if we wanted to help you, we couldn't, because there's not enough preparation time.
Now, it is the cool thing to be super anti-American.
This isn't news. Different than what americans might think, they're not necessarily looked at as the "big heroes" everywhere. There's a lot of countries who have made a lot of bad experiences because of them, and really, the USA isn't popular, on average, world-wide.
The hero thing is not a mindset of most Americans. It seems like you're considering everyone in the US is an ignorant conservative. While there is definitely a large group that is very ignorant and naive, there is a different large population that do not live in a fantasy world and understand what their country has done on a world stage.
Yes, this is what NATO is for. It is an alliance meant to prevent fascism from taking hold. Just because it’s only ever been used in non member countries doesn’t mean it can’t be used on us, especially if Trump continues to threaten allies. Talking about this leading to WWIII is a strawman argument. You don’t know that will happen and it is not a good reason to not be asking for help from our allies. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/NATO
The way i see it, America has gone very angry at anyone in the past who was accused of "interfering with American internal politics" for many years. That is why nobody wants to meddle in American internal politics anymore.
It is, in some sense, the fate of the tiger. When you're a gazelle or zebra, and you're sick, you can hope at least that a Tiger will come by and eat you, thus shortening your suffering. When you are the tiger, there's nobody predating you, and if you fall sick, it could take a very long time before you die.
They did it here in Canada to the trucker protestors. While everyone cheered it on, those of us with an eye for the future noted that what can be done to them can be done to us.
It seems pretty evident that the election was outright stolen, and I have a hard time believing nobody in power suspected something that many of us immediately called, not with the mountains of evidence that’s been stacking up for months, years even. So why didn’t they do anything? Why did they wait until Trump was sworn in to even talk about it?
No, dems just did a piss-poor job of motivating people. I voted for her, but she wasn't offering much other than an alternative to him. Same as ever.
Repubs motivate their people with lies and slander, but it's still motivational for hate-mongers. Don't sound like they did when Biden won. It wasn't stolen. Dems failed us.
This is the most frustrating thing about this administration: They are showing that you CAN do things. Democrats sit on their asses for four years, and Trump did all this in less than a month. Democrats better get their steel toe fucking boots on and kick these conservatives fucks in the sick.
ANYTHING LESS AND I SAY FUCK YOU
I am fucking sick of trying to do the right thing and GETTING FUCKING NOTHING.
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Sure reads a lot like the shit I saw in 2020. D’Souza and Lindell were pretty damn confident too. Wrong, lying even. But confident.
I'm doing everything I can, including starting my own group to organize locally, making God only knows how many calls to state reps, learning how to defend myself, translating for local immigrants with questions about what's happening, attending protests and assisting in those organization efforts, brushing up on my history, learning more about international treaties and alliances, volunteering at a food bank, and some other things that I would be stupid to share.
The US will have to go to war to keep down unrest. Whether Trump makes good on Canada / Greenland / Poland, the world will have to form a coalition against us, and it's likely China will take the lead.
There will be Chinese bombers over Washington just as there were Russian and American bombers over Berlin. Not that we'll be around to enjoy it, and those that remain will suffer as collaborators (whether they were or not).
We really don't want to let it get there. But then we really didn't want it to get here, and we knew in the early aughts with George W. Bush's administration this is where we were headed if someone didn't chance course. Obama, who promised to change course, did not.
This is specifically what NATO is designed for, to help when there are 3rd party threats to member nations. We have both made threats to other member nations (Canada, Greenland) and are currently experiencing a coup in our own country, which is a 3rd party threat if I've ever heard one.
I am doing everything I can, but as a private citizen my options are extremely limited. What am I supposed to do in response to an international distress signal?
In 2016, people thought that Trump was the problem. That if Trump left, we could have civility restored to the electoral process. Defeating Trump won't solve the problem because he isn't it - it is the electorate. The voters need to SEE what will happen when this or that occur.
Deport all the immigrants, see the damage that brings, then bring them back with legal protections this time.
Cancel all the science, see how far behind we get, then bring it back with all the funding to make the next moonshot.
Get rid of all fogien aid, watch as our global power dimishes, the vote to bring it back with a clear and true purpose other than empire building.
The people don't know WHY these things are important, and are unwilling to listen or learn. Thus, the only teacher is to experience. But to quote Trump: "There will be some pain" when doing it.
100%. Even after he leaves office, is anyone confident that the country will collectively go "well that was embarrassing, anyway, back to normality now!"
I don't disagree with you and I would love it if people had to experience the consequences of their poor decisions and learn hard lessons that they've been evading for years. The problem is that millions of innocents are and will be caught in the crosshairs. This is a matter of life or death for many people who did not vote for him and it is unconscionable to allow all those people to die just so a bunch of loud racist hillbillies with lead poisoning can learn a lesson.
Fair, I just see no other way of swaying minds without consequences. We tried 4 years of shielding people from Trump's baser urges, and we ended with thousands of people dying each day to COVID. Then 4 year later THEY VOTED HIM BACK IN.
They don't even know what DEI means until oh hey, they're out on disability for months+ for surgery in their physically demanding job and need help because their arm or whatever doesn't work and/or they'll be out for surgery for months and/or SSDI rejects their claim. The willful ignorance and just plain ignorance is really sad.
Dead on. This is a snowballing shit storm building since Reagan. Probably earlier. Trump is only a foothold, a useful idiot. He's popular with the Boomers and knows how to work them and use the language. They even refer to him as "their boy." Meanwhile he's "making deals" e.g. pumping the dicks of other corpos like Xi and Putin and pretending to get them on board even when he fails with the smarter leaders while his little weasels dismantle shit in the background.
It wasn't stolen and it wasn't forced on you. Depressingly enough, turkeys, it seems, do sometimes vote for Christmas. I totally agree with you about the awfulness of the situation but - he told you how he was going to govern, he told you what he was going to do and then he won the election that enables him to do it. You did, as a nation, choose this.
I don't know how any nation state can really intervene on that basis. Its not like Hitler steam rolling Poland or Putin annexing the Crimea - this isn't an invasion or a hostile takeover, it's an elected President carrying out the will of the people that voted for him.
I'm not going to argue with you, I get enough of that on reddit. But there is a literal mountain of evidence, including their own statements and sketchy behavior, hard data, unsecured voting machines, various voter suppression tactics, ballots that were tossed, code that was published online months (possibly more than a year) before the election, and one of the twerps currently taking over the treasury wrote code that can falsify ballots while he was an intern for Musk.
Also, it is like Hitler, they're using the same exact playbook, and while there are some key differences there is no arguing that this is the exact reason NATO exists. Justin Trudeau could invoke article 4 for threats of invasion. Someone from our government should still be able to invoke article 5. These international agreements exist because when the highest power in the nation is compromised, we need outside help.
Using NATO to stop Trump, you want WW3? Because that's how you get WW3. You're not going to get any help until you help yourselfs. It's your house, you have to clean it up. If you need an idea of a place to start, I'd start with the Democrats.
If you have democratic senators you should be a thorn in their side about why aren't they grinding the Senate to a halt. Why they aren't using every tool available to resist senate Republicans. The Republicans did when Obama was president and he wasn't a fascist. Now seems like a good time to start using all those republican cheats to blanket obstruct the Senate and Congress.
If you have republican senators you should be getting involved with the democratic party, first screaming and dragging everyone you know with you. Then demanding over and over that the old game is dead and they need you and the people to get out of this.
Regardless, no one is coming to save you. You need to first believe that you can actually work with your neighbors, then saves yourselves. Tons of Americans have been begging for your help to stop Trump for over a decade now and you thought it was just their job to take care of it. Well guess what, it was yours too and you failed to answer the call.
I'm sorry, I'm Canadian, and what exactly do you think all of NATO could do, allied and organized against the American armed forces? Do you seriously believe we could stage an effective military campaign against America? That would he suicide.
It's just so fucked up, all of it. They've been pumping shitloads of money into their military for so long, it's a behemoth larger than the military of the next, what, 9 countries combined? All that money should have been spent on things that are actually good for U.S. citizens. A better educational system, a healthcare system, more worker protections, a better social security net, trying to fix homelessness, etc.
But now, their humongous military is going to be used against their own people and their allies. And all the while I'm here thinking that a well-educated, healthy, happy populace would have been much less inclined to vote a fascist into office. But hey, they didn't need all that, they were already the best country in the world, right?
The worst part is that we're rich enough as a country to have our obscene military spending and civilized healthcare and education, we just choose not to.
This is literally the first I've heard of any of these things and whilst I'm not in North America I follow the political situation pretty closely. I'm not saying your wrong about any of it but who are the people saying this and where are they saying it? Has it been reported on either internally or externally to the US?
The overall playbook is fascist I agree but the situation I was trying to compare was Hitler invading a sovereign nation. Trump hasn't done that (yet anyway). I've got good friends in the US and I am very worried about them, I'm just not sure you're betting on the right horse by asking for outside nation-state aid. Rightly or wrongly they'll see that Trump was elected legally and they're never going to invade a country on that basis. There was zero talk of repercussions for Germany until Hitler invaded Poland because he followed the democratic process (or successfully manipulated it) to get elected and assume total power.
With all due respect, if this is the first you're hearing of any of this, then no you are not following the situation "pretty closely."
The hundreds of bomb threats from Russian servers on election day alone should be enough to convince people that some hinky shit was going on.
There's all kinds of stuff on Bluesky, discussion on reddit and lemmy, lots of reliable sources like AP News, The Atlantic, and Gizmodo, as well as recordings of interviews with Musk, and of Trump rallies. There's also hard ballot data from at least a few counties that has been studied by highly qualified analysts, and matches trends we see in elections in other countries that we know were a sham.
I could keep going but I'm tired and it's just not worth it. You're obviously skeptical, and that's just human nature, but how am I supposed to convince a skeptic from another country who isn't witnessing or experiencing this first hand? I'm not going to spin my wheels tracking down evidence for you, it's not a good use of the limited energy I have left. If you're truly curious the information is out there.
I'm not skeptical at all - I'm simply unaware of what you're talking about. When I say I'm following the situation pretty closely I mean the political situation as reported in the mainstream press. I don't think anyone who's from a country not directly involved is going to be aware of every resource unless its a special interest of theirs or its their job. I wouldn't expect someone not from the UK to be up to date with the latst developments of the Reform Party and how they're trying to swing the narrative here. If you have links, link 'em, I will definitely read them all. I'm asking you to lift my ignorance on the subject.
See the edit to my OG comment. But know that I think you have some nerve denying that any of this is happening when you don't even live in this country. Which you conveniently didn't mention in your first reply to me.
I have seen more than one of these issues first hand, I will not try to convince a complete stranger of my lived experiences.
Don't be silly. Where have I denied this is happening? I've already said to you I was unaware of what you were talking about and asked you to inform me. Whats all this posturing about? When did Lemmy become a place where anyone has to inform anyone else of what country they do or don't live in?
You want the outside world to take notice? Maybe a good start would be to help those who are interested but not familiar with the level of detail you are to the knowledge about your country you assume we all already have. By adding context to your original comment you've already made it ten times more useful to people like me.
You're saying that like it's a bad thing? If that's what needs to happen so that Elon Musk doesn't irreparably damage our country and cause the deaths of millions, then yes. Please. Invade us. We've done it to plenty of other countries, maybe it's our turn.
Also yeah, that's pretty much what NATO does when shit really hits the fan.
Your military is 37% of the whole world. It would require literally you vs the whole rest of the world, and even then with you being a literal island, an invasion would probably still not be possible because of the supply line advantage.
They don't have to invade us and that's not what I'm suggesting. They go straight to Musk and Trump's strongholds and arrest them. Much like what happened in South Korea, except with outside forces, since ours seem to be neutered. Anyone who says this isn't what NATO does, doesn't know what they're talking about.
Also, Trump and Musk are NOT popular with the military right now. There have been active duty service members at protests, one had to be carried out of a confirmation hearing, multiple are uploading videos saying what an insult it was that J6ers were pardoned, and so on. I would hazard a guess that whoever did this with the flag is also military or closely aligned with the miliary, because it isn't exactly common knowledge. So if the time comes, I don't think many will be rushing to defend the masters of this coup.
The Canadians I talk to are either furiously pissed off and lashing out at me like I'm about to annex them myself or dead ass silent. This is a weird fucking timeline to say the least.
I don't understand what it's going to take for someone to do something
Who is someone? Who is something? Organize and mobilize. I know all Americans didn’t choose this, but you’ll need a lot of support/like minded folks (which it sounds like you have). Trump’s shock doctrine has clearly worked. Try and focus on tangible steps to take whether it’s annoying the heck out of your elected officials, joining a grassroots org, or attending a public rally on an off day.
Myself and everyone I know have been doing all of the things you mentioned since November, if not earlier. There have been multiple massive protests. We have been calling our reps demanding recounts, asking why democrats are capitulating to unconstitutional actions, and begging for them to intervene. We have been protesting at every opportunity. We have joined and even started our own organizations trying to get people organized. Why aren't we gaining any traction? Because they already stopped listening to us ages ago. Because all our means of large scale organization (Twitter, Instagram, Facebook) are actively suppressing information. Because every group we start gets brigaded and eventually shut down by internet trolls with nothing to lose. Because people are tired, sick, broke, and traumatized. The other day I watched an ICE raid happen in real time. These people were members of my community, good people, and now they've probably been sent to a concentration camp.
I don't want to hear shit about "tangible steps." What tangible steps can the average citizens of this country take to stop the richest man in the world, and multiple other billionaires, who already have their dirty paws in every single aspect of our government infrastructure? We can't even get in the same room as the guy. He has choked our skies with satellites and has all our personal information.
Please tell me what else we're supposed to do, I'm all ears.
Stop begging. Start demanding. They need to understand that democracy and unionization was the compromise. And, apparently, they won't listen to words.
That's neither easy, nor pretty, nor civilized. But they fucked around, and need to find out.
If you feel something, you're never alone. Organize through meatspace, use no digital tools. Which manual are you following? There are plenty to find if you look. Don't expect "others" to do it for you.