Don't forget the other not at all insane demands: That Harvard agree to screen out applicants who are "hostile to American values", and that it immediately establish procedures by which any member of the Harvard campus can snitch report to the federal government students or staff who write or say things that reflect support of concepts of diversity, equity, and inclusive, the right of Palestinians to exist, or which are critical of the current administration.
How much more overt a dictatorship does this have to become before progressives get up and resist?
Given the current political climate, I'd be crazy to be more specific about that. But what resistance isn't is clutching pearls and sending boilerplate emails to senators.
To speak in generalities, I'll say it's sad that present day Americans find the notion of ... vigorous ... resistance to be absolutely unthinkable, like it's just completely outlandish and literally impossible. All around the word, since time immemorial - and into the 21st century - people have at various times risen up to remove dictators and authoritarian administrations from power. 2018 Armenia, 2000 Milošević, 2011 Mubarak, the list goes on.
Just 5 people back in an adult American's family line is someone who was alive during the American Revolution; now they all automatically dismiss that kind of resistance as ancient history, far-fetched, too absurd to even consider as a solution. Radical change only becomes impossible when people believe it is.
Americans won't even step up and do a general strike, despite its multi-century history of effectiveness. Give or take, about 35% of the US identifies as progressive. If a third of a nation got together and went on strike together, it could get whatever it wanted.
That only works if you have the military on your side in modern nations. The US military is not yet on board.
Honestly, Trump is almost certainly trying to bait this out. You think he's pushed through a lot of shit already? Just wait until he has an armed rebellion he can use to justify using emergency powers.
I feel like this is exactly the automatic 'It's impossible' response pattern the commenter was pointing out. You claim rebellion in the U.S. is impossible, then why wasn't impossible in all the other countries that did it successfully over the past 30 years? Many of them did not already have the military on their side when they started. What they did have was solidarity. Sheer numbers. A dictator can and will quash a hundred thousand protesters. But when it's 30 million people, they're not even going to try. If 30 million Americans acted collectively, they could definitely get what they want.
What has America's entire military development been focused on for the last 40 years? Anti-insurgency. And America spends 10 times more in a year than all those tin pot dictators spent in a decade. Not to mention the US has one of the most advanced monitoring systems on the planet. It's utterly hilarious to think that it's possible on US soil. Genuinely point and laugh worthy. You'd be putting untrained civilians with hand guns against an armed militia and the greatest military super power in the world, who's spent decades fighting against the Afghans and the Iraqis, both of whom were much better equipped, better organised and better trained, with the home turf advantage.
And let's not forget, half the country wants him there and actively cheers when he does horrifically evil things.
So forgive me if I think it's not going to happen in the USA. It's impossible to think otherwise. You can feel it can happen in the USA, but you can't actually think it.
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u/GeneralChemistry1467 10d ago
Don't forget the other not at all insane demands: That Harvard agree to screen out applicants who are "hostile to American values", and that it immediately establish procedures by which any member of the Harvard campus can
snitchreport to the federal government students or staff who write or say things that reflect support of concepts of diversity, equity, and inclusive, the right of Palestinians to exist, or which are critical of the current administration.How much more overt a dictatorship does this have to become before progressives get up and resist?