At work: "I hate mondays"

Curiously I'm having to deal with this very conflict. I want to join the resistance, but I'm (literally) allergic to sunlight (which precludes street demonstrations) and I'm a goblin when it comes to in-person social development, such as organizing.

The mutual aid groups in Sacramento are scarce, so it's difficult to ask them.

Do I make useful memes and infographics? Not sure.

Curiously, the nearest ICE hq is in San Francisco, and there are resistence movements there interfering with ICE action.

or things have to be otherwise be bad enough that they genuinely think that things can't get worse for them if they attend and change might actually happen if they attend.

Usually, the main reason for protests and revolutions to grow immensely is if the means of livelihood is affected. No food to eat? Blame the government. No jobs? Blame the government. No housing? Blame the government. They're cutting pensions? Blame the government. Speaking of which, the planned pension reform by Putin, years ago, was the only time his leadership was seriously threatened by the public. Otherwise, Russian people don't care if Kremlin bombs the Georgians or Ukrainians, or dissidents keep flying off the window, so long as their means of living are not touched. In that sense, individuals are selfish and don't mind authoritarianism as long as they themselves are not severely affected.

Humans are complex and are not naturally predisposed to crave for democracy, contrary to what many Westerners believe. Ultimately, it is a question of liberty versus security. Some prefer security so long as standards of living is well kept by the ruling elites, and certain degree of freedom is allowed to the public. That's why, unfortunately, some authoritarian leaderships persists for so long. Saudi Arabia is an absolute monarchy for as long as anyone can remember, and Francisco Franco's fascist regime survived long, in spite of the fall of fascism after World War 2.

the person needs to have no risk from attending

The government deals in violence and knows how to handle groups of protestors, whether they originate as peaceful or violent. Don’t play to their strengths by engaging them on that level and giving them a confrontation that they can escalate.

Non-participation, boycotts, malicious compliance, quiet quitting, anticonsumption, and birthstriking are more my style. It’s not glamorous or quick, but governments are notoriously inept at dealing with situations that they can’t just beat or shoot at. They don’t know what to do when a hammer is an ineffective tool for the job.

These sorts of actions may be inconvenient or cause you to forgo certain things that you want. However it doesn't put you in any actual risk, whether it be physical, legal, or financial. The non-risk aspect of it means that it has a much lower barrier to entry, and thus a lower threshold for how bad things need to get before people take action.

“A protest” is literally nothing

While not wrong, I don't think this is necessarily the whole story.

It's more that our collective narrative has been atomized, and people have been given their permission slips to stay comfortable, to only consume the news and stories and narratives that preserves their comfort. (Note that comfort is not the same as happiness, this conflation is absolutely wrecking our entire society, learn they are different things and you will make great progress in your life.)

Our addiction to comfort comes from survival impulses, and capital has learned how to exploit this, to give us food and drugs and products to buy and shows to watch and video games to escape into and podcasters and streamers who take care of the mental work for us. None of which makes us feel satisfied or complete, but placates our survival urges and makes us not seek change or new ideas.

The internet and related algorithms has shoved a wedge deeply between our shared realities. We are no longer forced to listen to the uncomfortable perspectives of others. We are no longer required to adjust, to compromise, to adjust our views. As individuals you may think you're very self-reliant and self-actualized, but we're talking populations. Populations are like liquids, they seek certain lowest levels. Our levels are now manufactured. This means you can live in willful obliviousness to uncomfortable truths without ANY consequence.

So even if someone "knows" that there is something like a concentration camp being built, there is no chance in their world for it to intrude on their comfort so the incentive to DO SOMETHING about it is not there, so it just becomes an uncomfortable presence which we tend to unconsciously avoid. We then create stories in our heads to rationalize and validate these feelings. Cognitive dissonance is not some mental fallacy that only "stupid" people fall into, it's hard-wired into each of us as a survival tool to avoid creating problems in our predictable lives.

edit: reminder people, there was massive pushback about the US getting involved with Europe and Germany before and during WW2 even as evidence of genocide was coming to light. This isn't new. What is new is that we don't have social pressure anymore to do the right thing. There is absolutely no incentivization to change stances.

One of the more dangerous assumptions is that Nazis were overtly and objectively evil from the start. It conveniently looked perpetually different than what we're currently seeing.

I mean, the photos we're being presented - they're not even in black and white!

That is a problem. That's how these things start. You ignore something right in front of your face. The people need to draw a line. While it might not be an extermination camp you dont want to wait until it becomes one. These people in these camps are only guilty of misdemeanors. They are not all violent criminals as trump would have you believe.

My kids are the reason I'd be going to fight.

Their kids need them too. The point of solidarity is accepting the same risks as them because they don't get to make that choice.

If only there was something we could do anonymously like some machine that lets us all communicate and shape culture and awareness that was free and could be done in our own homes with massive effects

Meh, its ok, its really just a truth of the universe at this point. No changing it. If there was the sentiment from everyone would be, "right, let's do something right now."

Im also not infallible so maybe the sentiment changes.

This is how you concentrate evil, and doing so in a huge area with the most power and resources is a bad idea.
The better idea is to organize, spread the good out, beat gerrymandering, beat FPTP, regulate campaign funding and special interest lobbying, change the laws, bring back evidence based policy making expert council, and crush the enemy.... Or be crushed and or ousted yourself.

We don’t need the Americans who are too cowardly to fix their own country, thanks.

If you have an university degree or job that's in high demand even learning a foreign language can be done after you got out. (source: I have a shitload of America friends that came to Europe without speaking anything but English)

Or even just still using English. Most countries use it in some capacity.

Need ideas for countries. What's a good place I could move to that has decent public transit infrastructure, free healthcare and good welfare/retirement benefits, cheap gigabit internet, and legal cannabis concentrates?

(Last one is most important because I literally cannot sleep without weed; prescription sleeping pills are awful and do not work effectively for me. Also flower is a non-option cause the wife hates the smell and I want to be considerate.)

It's more like 30% of the population

And what are you doing?

I hate that term. Eichmann very notably revelled in his role and tried to play up how many people they killed.