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Comment by ramesh31 | Hacker News Reader

>Whether or not there are leaders to oppose them varies. Or do we have to wait until the only opposition option is open war?

No one in this country has the ability to care about anything at all anymore that isn't directly necessary for survival unless you're a millionaire (and we all know which side they're on). The result is that it makes the individually rational choice to keep your head down and just deal with it. We are at the brink, and there is just no other option than to watch in horror and pray you aren't affected.

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"Life is political, not because the world cares about how you feel, but because the world reacts to what you do. The minor choices we make are themselves a kind of vote, making it more or less likely that free and fair elections will be held in the future. In the politics of the everyday, our words and gestures, or their absence, count very much."

- On Tyranny by Timothy D. Snyder

Keeping your head down and just dealing with it as a choice that you can make and it is the choice that they count on you making. But it's not the only choice.

> No one in this country has the ability to care about anything at all anymore that isn't directly necessary for survival

We say as the richest country in the richest age of human existence, where most Americans have no practical constraints on access to food or emergency medicine, luxuries unimaginable to most of our ancestors.

There are options but those options won't end up well for you as an individual. The only way things can change is collective action and people are too glued to their social media bubbles to realize that we're not as different as we think.

I'm not "glued to the social media bubble", I'm paying rent, so I don't end up on the street where a Fox News host says I should be forcibly murdered, and millions of my fellow citizens explicitly agree.

I don't work for FAANG or make a huge salary, I don't own property, I don't have anything.

Most of us aren't privileged enough to be able to walk away from work.

I need medication to live a partially functional life. Am I supposed to just magically acquire that medication while I'm being fired from work, losing my insurance, and being arrested for daring to have a democratic opinion?

Hell, my state is mostly Democrat right now. Am I supposed to go live in another state for a while and get arrested there so the right wing news can cry about how liberals are literally invading other states?

We were screaming and crying about how all this was going to go down for decades. Some of us even back in the red scare days. We were called socialist and unamerican.

But no, "Both sides" You would cry, or "Free market" to prevent us from reigning in corporations that own our lives. "We don't need a software developer union, what if the guy next to me makes more money! I can definitely negotiate better against literal behemoths than a collective group of people!" You cried.

It wasn't meant as a personal attack against you Jesus Christ.

Sorry, I wasn't trying to attack you either. I meant the royal "you"

In both Germany and the USSR, a lot of people died making zero progress (and maybe even negative progress in some ways) liberating their country.

I just think, as long as Trump's rhetoric and claimed policy is popular, there's no "resistance" possible. Americans want this crap. They'll keep voting that way until they get it as hard as possible.

So many people are insisting that people like me have to rise up and take back our country, ignoring that our country wants this and chose this, multiple times.

McCarthyism worked. It suppressed speech and activity, and basically eliminated socialism in the US for a century. History is rhyming.

I don't have a solution.

Me neither and I share your concern. That being said it's my opinion this popularity is propped up by algorithms that tend to push people towards this type of dumb shit. If there was a way to get through to these misguided idiots I think this country may have a shot at not being a complete hellhole. Is it idealistic and naive? Maybe. Just my two cents y'know.

Together we can have a voice. But we need a good leader.

A bit hyperbolic, ain't it? Lots of people who are not millionaires care about much more than survival. Like for example the family I drove by a couple of months ago - they were very concerned about fitting 3 dirt bikes (1 adult size, 2 kid ones) in a pick up trailer. This family was not millionaire.....

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