It sure would be nice…
'I wish' but I'm certainly not going to hold my breath.
I'm not confident there will be significant resistance from within the US anymore. I feel like it's more likely the US collapses into fascist authoritarianism, festers and grows until it spills over and the rest of the world manages/is forced to unite and clean up this mess. (ie actual full blown WW3, at the scale of previous world wars.)
I would love to be proven wrong though.
I'm so scared that you're right. I have been sitting here watching the "don't let games die" movement just explode with support in what feels like a week and feeling bittersweet about it. I'm really happy that the movement is getting so much attention, but in contrast https://generalstrikeus.com/ has slowly crept up 100,000 new signatures in the months since I became aware of it.
It's depressing that something so important can't even approach the movement that keeping old video games around already has.
Signing petitions is the easiest and laziest form of activism and incredibly unlikely to change anything. A general strike is a huge risk to the people involved in it, but has the power to cripple a government and force change. 300,000 people committed to risk their livelihood by not showing up to work is a hell of a lot more courageous than 1,000,000 people signing an online petition that comes with no risk.
Even worse is that so many people from the US support it but won't even petition their own government. Critikal is from the US, is a millionaire, has a large following, but (at least to my knowledge) has never used any of that in an attempt to enact political changes in the US. For me, that is way more depressing.
For starters, stop killing games is European.
It also doesn't involve likelihood being fired from your job and potentially being made homeless, while also being harrassed and assaulted by police (and going into medical debt to recover from it).
For general strike US to become a viable thing, I think Trump, Musk or another R-nutjob has to come out and say how silly that idea is. Then with some publicized backlash to that, people will sign up to do it en masse, possibly with a few mayors or governors' support.
Debunking PirateSoftware's misconceptions (being charitable) is what spurred on the gaming sphere's mass attention to it.
You know, you could have said worse but you didn't. You just noted we need some self improvement.
People need to protest for longer than a couple of days. They need to do it long enough for shit to actually get disrupted. Complacency is our collective middle name.
Many Americans are fine with what's going on. After all, they have Jesus to help them through the tough times.
The rest have been brainwashed to think they need to kill people or do useless violent shit that just gets them shot or imprisoned. Otherwise all they can do is march around or vent.
Instead forget about the government (they don't care), and go after the true cause: Billionaires and their corporations, propagandists, fascists, and their supporters. Just quietly take away their assets. Make fascism too expensive for them, financially and personally -- because that's the real problem: there's no punishment for bad behavior if you're wealthy or connected. They only care about money, so take it and the remove their ability to make it. Hit them where it hurts them.
Be non-confrontational and asymmetrical.
You think "going after their money" won't get you shot or imprisoned? They're fascists.
