Much respect.

Sometimes I imagine a counterfactual history where good people just abandoned those red states for purple ones in unison just before a census. A progressive gerrymandering of the Electoral College + House + Senate all at once.

Even just one cycle of that would have jerked the Overton window significantly left…

Maybe?..

DEI = Deny Every Injection?

My assumptions were built off your original comment, in which you said it was recent and driven by XHS:

The realization came with TikTok ban. Soon as I heard that TikTok could be banned, I started looking for alternatives […] I stumbled upon XHS […] about a month before everyone else. I was absolutely fucking blown away by China

I don’t know your life story and it didn’t seem like a leap to think “He uses TikTok” and “It doesn’t sound like he’s been to China from his reaction”. I could be wrong about those assumptions, but it wasn’t unreasonable. It’s pretty wild that you’re trying to walk it back even though it’s right there, verbatim.

Again, my intention wasn’t a personal attack, I’m just trying to provide a counterpoint to the sentiment I often see; that China is a bastion of progress and everything I’ve been told is western propaganda. My anecdotal explanation is to show this isn’t coming from what I read on CNN or second hand but my lived experiences in the country.

And if you want to think I’m a douche: go for it, more power to you. I just wanted to voice my thoughts on the matter.

Pretty weird that you were “blown away by China” then… No need to get mad 🤷‍♀️

My anecdotal experience is different than yours, but everything I’ve said is nothing but facts. China is a country of 1.4 billion people and 3.7 million sq mi, so obviously sentiment will vary. But I based my opinion on what I’ve personally seen and people I’ve talked to across half a dozen cities, so I feel pretty confident in my pessimism.

So you’ve been in the last few months since you learned these great things? Or was it before Covid, when people were physically caged into their apartments?

Was it only to the sterilized foreigner hotels on business trips? Or did you ever stay with locals who had to register your passport with the local police?

Were you able to spend physical currency or was everything already hooked up to official biometric identification (payments tied to socials tied to state id)?

I’m not asking to be confrontational, but the shiny foreigner facing China of yesteryear is nothing like the domestic atmosphere of China today. Their international digital presence is as carefully managed as their local platforms.

The locals I’ve met definitely have a positive view of the US, but things have gotten very dark very quickly under Xi. Think about why they could have started their emigration at any time but are choosing now.

Have you uh… actually been to China? Or talked to anyone from China (in real life)? I do both, quite often. Without fail, anyone with the means is actively trying to leave. And not in a “grass is greener” way. Those emigrating to America are fully aware of the political turmoil, they’d just rather be out before it’s not physically possible to leave.

It’s unlike we’ve been told in almost all respects…

Based on testimony from a demonstrably censored platform?

I’m not arguing for American superiority or that the vacuum won’t be easily filled by other countries. But that change isn’t automatically an upgrade.

This one yes I suppose, I guess its more symbolic. But I do see this comment on every protest so thought I’d clarify

Your city hall/capital building is empty on the weekend

THIS 🚨 IS 🚨 HAPPENING 🚨 TO 🚨 YOU 🚨

One of the biggest superpowers in the world wasn’t captured by accident or from some grassroots stupidity. The same exact playbook is being run in nearly every developed country by the same people. You need to learn from where we failed and stem the tide.

If you don’t understand why that “position on global affairs” is important coming from the people actively being crushed by the domino, I don’t know what to say. I guess we’ll just mutually pity each other’s tyrannical governments…

I don’t think that’s usually the message we’re trying to get across. It’s very easy to say “well they elected him, just fix it, its your own fault” because most don’t grasp the reality of the situation from the outside. A large majority of our population does not want this, even those who bought the lies before the election.

It’s not just America’s house it’s a global problem. Saying “Hello, just a reminder that We Don’t Fucking Want This” and “As bad as it looks internationally its much worse domestically” is an alarm bell, not brownie points.

The same guys fucking our country are meddling internationally with yours, but now with official government resources. If you don’t want the same thing to happen, take drastic measures. Ban AfD, cut off fascist media platforms, seize assets, whatever you have to do. As problematic as any of that sounds, risking the alternative is not worth it.

These people have the memory of a goldfish. Resignations were the main way he got the vacancies to fill with collaborators in his first term

Going off the assumption there aren’t any bad actors at play, these seem like a good approach and I’d gladly participate.

Only thing I’d question is a 24 hour economic blackout. The striking part is impactful, but putting off buying a TV for one day is negligible. Hell, you probably already paid for a full month of Netflix already.

I’d prefer a stronger commitment to progressively tightening the noose. Ramp up the economic pressure indefinitely until demands are met, you won’t die from not spending money.

Good news, we’re about to have a lot less allies!

Those judges aren’t on the Supreme Court (where this will eventually end up). Its the same as a Republican doing a performative protest vote against GOP legislation that goes through anyway. They get to save some face, but at the end of the day no harm no foul.

Thanks for appreciating the struggle, I’ll drink to that 🍻

I mean, apart from his money giving him a platform to really spread hate and hurt people, it really is pretty sad at an individual level. Dude is mentally unwell, and not just because he’s an evil hateful person.

There’s plenty of evil people just as bad and just as loud that are in control of their mental state and understand what they’re doing.

Gutting your house and living in a utility closet is pretty messed up, rich or poor

Even looking strictly at the voting population, Trump got less than 50% of the votes; more people voted “not Trump” than voted for him. That’s before you account for the majority of 90 million non-voters holding left leaning views (studies say irregular voters are as low as 40% republican voters) with either no acceptable candidate to support or living under voter suppression.

Did you know it’s possible to with the presidency with as low as 23% of the popular vote? Guess which color states have a massively oversized impact on the electoral college…

The people getting shot are not Trump voters at this point. More specifically, people that are opposed to absolutely destroying other countries are the first ones targeted.

Even if we all suffered perfectly evenly, only 22% of Americans voted for Trump. Please keep the other 78% in mind.

Putting aside whether or not that’s anathema to the cause, I’m not sure how you’d “other” them in a meaningful way. The reason it works for the right is that they target groups who’s members are publicly visible and can’t voluntarily leave (LGBT+, minorities, foreign religions, etc…)

If you target a group of people for their beliefs (something not overtly visible), they can either relabel their group or plausibly claim their beliefs differ in some way. We already do this for fascists and nazis, but very few people are going to outwardly admit to these ideals. Now they’ll just say they’re “extra-constitutional”, “alt right”, “Christian patriot”, or any other hat a bigot wants to swap out for far right authoritarian.

You can’t “other” them where they already proudly claim a majority (white + Christian) so what are you left with?

There might not be an easy alternative right now.

People tend not to internalize a problem until they can personally see it, and a lot of these problems (deportations, cutting education, handcuffing the CDC, etc…) might not affect them until things get truly bleak. Unless of course they do something reckless like directly cutting funds that goes directly to their wallets (Medicare or Social Security).

Spreading awareness has always been a huge problem. Activists in Tsarist Russia had the same problem of trying to reach out to uneducated rural peasants and their efforts didn’t go smoothly. And of course this was before everyone had hand held disinformation machines in their pockets.

I don’t have a magic bullet but we do have some things going for us. It’s not yet illegal to spread radical ideas, our targets are generally literate, and we still share a fair number of cultural references.

The following is my best guess at advice, I’m just as open to ideas as giving them:

The tricky part is that mainstream social platforms are a non starter. You’d never outweigh the echo chamber. In my opinion digital organization is secondary at best because anything can be suppressed at the whim of server owner, ISP, or government.

So as dumb as it sounds, go forth and talk to people in real life. Be sure you’re educated on what you want to talk about (read your history and theory, know what political buzzwords actually mean). Try to avoid activities that insulate you in your own comfort zone, and gravitate towards ones with wide appeal and low barriers to entry.

Start a woodworking club with some like minded friends or join a book club and offer suggestions. Running group, bodybuilding, birdwatching, whatever… If you want to do some good for your community, join a mutual aid network.

Try to know the narrative these people are living in, even if it’s a fantasy. Avoid trigger words they’re primed to react to, keep it simple and let them draw their own conclusions. Not everyone will be receptive, some people are just assholes.

It’s not sexy but it’s also not that hard to point out glaring injustices in the world. Most people can at least see that far and agree that something needs to change, starting that conversation is first step.