I think we’re talking past each other here and we agree on objectives, just not on methods.

In response to public opinion outcry, Politicians will first make empty promises, then superficial changes which are easily reversible, and only beyond that actual structural changes which are hard to reverse hence are more permanent.

The latter ones is what I meant before with “permanent”. What politicians did in response to the George Floyd demonstrations was all the way up to superficial changes, but not structural changes, hence it didn’t take long for things to go back to roughly the way they were, and the underlying problem of police violence in the US of which the George Floyd killing was a symptom, is now the same or even worse.

The only peaceful march kind of demonstrations (so, not things like strikes) which I know of were politicians went all the way to structural changes are the kind which lasted months (and at times they weren’t actually peaceful), and it’s very hard for people to sustain that without organizing.

This demonstration, on the other hand, lasted a single day. I have never heard of any demonstration that lasted a single day and changed anything in a sustained way ever anywhere in the World. I’ll be happy if you find me an example to prove me wrong (as that means there’s hope).

I think we both agree on the need for sustained pressure and for people not to grow complacent, and as I see it that means that people have to get involved in grassroots efforts and civil society groups to force that change and keep up the pressure until the change is structural and hence deep and near-irreversible. Merely going to a one-day demonstration won’t achieve sustained change, but if it acts as a step to joining said grassroots efforts and civil-society groups that keep working well beyond that demonstration then it’s a means to an end.

My point is that loudly celebrating a single day peaceful demonstration without the caveat that “it must be a start not and end”, risk making many if not most feel “mission accomplished”, become complacent and not do anything further, exactly the opposite of your objective of “sustained push for change were people do not grow complacent”.

As I see it, if you want the people to keep on pushing there should be a “what next” after the “good job everybody” in the celebrating of this demonstration, but that’s not what I see in the countless threads here in Lemmy: all I see is people celebrating it as if “showing Trump he’s not liked” was the whole objective of the thing and it was achieved by this demonstration, as if “showing Trump he’s not liked” is anywhere close to enough to achieve a structural change of American politics.

If people were indeed getting into the kind of organizations that can deliver the sustained effort both of us think is required, we would be seeing “this is just the start” kind of statements, but I haven’t seen any yet and this together with the historical track record of peaceful demonstrations in US leads me to believe this one isn’t a beginning of something more, just a one-off.

Notice the merelly starting the very sentence sentence you quote from me about the George Floyd protests.

The pigs are still often holding people down by putting their knee on that person’s neck, so how exactly has the largest demonstration in America changed anything?!

Again, my point is that demonstrations have to be more than walking whilst holding a board up - at the very least they have to be opportunities to get contacts from other people with a view of joining grassroots groups for change.

If all that people do is walk and shout with lots of other people and then at the end of it go home with a feeling of achievement and do nothing further, all you get out of it is what you got with the George Floyd ones - empty promises from politicians and no actual change - when what all those millions of American should have gotten was a restructuring of policing in the US.

People here are way over-celebrating something which means very little unless we see that it has led to many following it with getting involved in politics and/or grassroots movements - it’s premature and it makes me suspect that for many who participated this one demonstration was it and they aren’t following it through with next steps.

I’m not American. If I went there to lead the revolution I would end up in El Salvador.

I did, however, got involved in politics in two countries I live in and did a lot of campaigning for them, so I’ve actually done the deed as far as I could rather than merely talk about it, and did so further than just demonstrations.

Demonstrations are nice as a way for people to know that they’re far from alone in their concerns, but they’re worthless if not leveraged into helping make or grow grassroots organization to change the actual underlying problems that results in somebody like Trump getting elected again and again (and I’m pretty sure that if that doesn’t change, when Trump is out somebody else like him or worse will eventually get elected).

The Georgy Floyd demonstrations are a great example of what happens if demonstrations aren’t leveraged to grow civic-society movements for change: you get some vague promises from politicians and then nothing actually changes.

I just feel that people here are treating these demonstrations as some kind on getting near the finish line when they’re at best (and hopefully) a beginning, and not even a beginning of the end but and beginning of the beginning, and they should be treated as opportunities to get the ball rolling on things that can actually snowball into real change.

If all you do after a demonstration is pat yourself on the back for having “done something” whilst you don’t even have some contacts for groups of people you’re thinking of joining for further actions, you’ve just done exactly what the actual powers that control the country wanted you to do: defused your anger whilst not starting the ball rolling on real change.

Look, it can totally seen how the protests give hope to others by showing them that “they’re far from alone in their concerns” and doing so in a way which is independent of mainstream political parties (which is good, since in my experience when political parties capture protests, they use such movements for their own personal good, in the process weakening the original movement).

In fact I totally approve of the protests and (even though I’m not American) I’m happy with just how big they were because maybe American has enough good people to make it a better country in the World stage (plus, frankly, I have some American acquaintances from minorities and don’t want to see them suffer).

What I fear is that people here in Lemmy are crazily over-celebrating the protest as some kind of ending in itself when it’s at best a beginning, and not even the beginning of the end but the beginning of the beginning.

If these protests aren’t leveraged to organize grassroots movements to start doing things like guerrilla (in the marketing sense, rather than violent sense) campaigns to oust the crooked politicians no matter what their party is and weaken the influence of Money in politics, they’re worthless, same as the George Floyd protests ended up being worthless because they didn’t led to any organized follow through to force politicians to restructure policing in America.

So my point is that people need to keep their eye on the long term solution for America’s problems, and that doesn’t stop with kicking Trump out, it requires a far deeper cleanup of the American political system and addressing the problems of common Americans so that another guy like Trump (or, more likely, worse) doesn’t get eventually get in power after Trump is out.

Trump is not the disease, he’s a symptom, so merely Trump out isn’t going to cure it.

I’m still trying to get a response to my original point that

“There are two sides. The Right and everyone else. The Right wins because they stay on topic and vote. Until the rest of us fall in line like they do, they’ll keep on winning.”

does not logically follow from

“Donald Trump won the election in 2016 over Hilary Clinton”

and hence the latter does not prove the former.

The whole ploy of the other post in, when I pointed that out, demanding that I do the impossible and provide a “specific” and “detailed” plan to “get Trump out” (as if I’m some kind of omniscient divinity that can produce a specific and detailed plan for something as complex as that out of the top of my mind), followed by using my inability to do the impossible as evidence that I must be wrong about my earlier point, is just a common argumentation ploy to distract away from the point I made rather than address it, and specifically a ploy that the MAGAs constantly use.

Of course I don’t have a “specific” and “detailed” plan to “get Trump out”, and neither has the poster who demanded that I provided one in the full expectation that I couldn’t - if it was that easy that even an internet rando could come up with a “specific and detailed plan” for it, it would’ve already happened.

If you read the thread back you will notice that I made a good faith attempt at providing at least some ideas, whilst the other poster has not put forward a single positive solutions oriented idea, only criticism, starting by criticizing everybody and later moving to criticizing my inability to do the impossible.

“Always criticism never solutions” is exactly the political strategy of populists. People who want to try and solve things, even if they think it’s going to be hard as shit, don’t spend their time in “criticize everybody” mode.

You’re lying about what I wrote

Quote the exact words were I “blamed everybody” or even “asked for a solution”.

Once again you’re using a ploy straight out of the Fascist Manual of Argumentation: “When accused of something, accuse the other person of the same, lying if need be.”

From the Fascist Manual of Argumentation you so far have:

• “Made broad claims about how everybody else is responsible for societal problems without providing any evidence at all of those claims. Demand that other do the work of disproving it when you yourself didn’t do the work of trying to prove it”
• “When asked to back that theory with actual evidence, state a fact that is not logically linked to the theory you put forward, and hence cannot logically prove it”.
• “When pointed out that there is no logical link between that event and your theory, counter-attack by demanding the impossible those pointing it out (in this case a “specific and detailed plan” for the problems of America as if that was easy) and when they naturally cannot deliver the impossible, use that to go down some “I win” rant whilst continuing to avoid the original point they made”.
• “When they point out the nature of the argumentation ploys you’re using to avoid addressing the original points they made, LIE about what they wrote to claimed that it was THEY who actually did it”.

If you were arguing in good faith you would’ve either walked back on that theory, refined it some more, or tried to actually show there was a logical link between “Donald Trump winning the election in 2016 over Hilary Clinton” and “There are two sides. The Right and everyone else. The Right wins because they stay on topic and vote.”.

You did not. Instead you went for the “Demand the impossible and when the impossible is not delivered claim that it proves the other person is not wrong” ploy, same as the MAGAs do.

By exactly using the MAGA the technique of, after ranting about blaming everybody else but yourself about all maner of problems, “asking” for others to provide solutions only to criticize them when given them, you’ve just proved what I suspected, so thanks for that.

Whatever is the way to solve the US problems, it’s the very opposite of that “criticized everything and everybody” shit that you, EXACTLY LIKE THE FAR-RIGHT POPULISTS are doing - that shit is literaly “how to divide people and make them believe there is no option other than compliance” out of the Authoritarian Playbook

Being a fucking rock, literally, does more towards solving the situation in the US than what you are doing.

Whether because you’re a sock-puppet or because you’re the ultimate useful idiot, you are part of the problem, not of the solution.

Trump is a symptom, not the disease.

By worring so much about the puppet instead of the puppet masters, you’re playing into the hands of the handful of people who control the politics of the US and hence the US.

Go after the real power of the land: the ultra-wealthy.

A General Strike would be a good start.

That’s as much “evidence” for your original “two sides” theory as it is for my “witch in the Moon” theory.

Also you’ve moved the goalposts to a self-fullfilling and generic to the point of uselessness statement “people should have done more to defeat Donald and the GOP”.

That’s like saying that “all drivers in car crashes should have done more not to crash their cars”.

Well, true, but also about as worthless as “insights” go as “the sky is blue”.

Also by blaming people you’re implying that “the system works and is fair” hence the fault is entirelly of people who have full agency and control. I’m afraid that things like the partisan support in the US for Genocide or the extreme level of police violence show that “people” don’t really have full agency or even much control - in fact I could spend the whole day listing how most people don’t really have much in the way of control of how the US is managed, though granted those wo do have most of the control are people (unless one subscribes to the theory that the ultra-rich are lizard-men).

You guys think that merely walking around in your own time holding up a board and shouting a bit, all focused on the mango puppet instead of the puppet masters, is going to change anything given that there is no single Historical event in the US ever of the lower classes rebelling against and deposit the upper classes (even the Revolution was literally the American plebs led by the American upper class fighting against the English plebs controlled by the English upper class)?!

The murder of the CEO of UnitedHealthcare had more impact, if only temporary because it wasn’t followed by more similar murders.

Even millions of people marching and shouting a bit (and so polite that they do it in their own time) will cause no fear for the elites because that’s in no way a warning that the heads of the elites will soon start getting separated from their shoulders if nothing changes.

You need at the very least a General Strike and/or targetting the economic and propaganda interests of the elites (trashing the TV studios of certain channels or certain newspapers would send a powerful message).

I mean, just notice the impact on police violence of the greatest demonstrations in the US - the George Floyd protests: nothing or even worse than nothing as the pigs have never been this violent.

Not that poster, but judging by what the largest protests in the US ever - the George Floyd protests - achieved when it comes to police violence in the US (it’s the same or worse now), in the present age in the US merelly coming out and walking for a bit in your own time while holding a board up doesn’t seem to achieve anything.

Think of it from the point of view of the Political and Money “elites” in the US: they get zero direct negative impact from the riff-raff in their own time doing a big march against the elite’s puppet mango emperor, and there is no single Historical instance in the US were the lower classes rebelled against the upper classes and properly fucked them up, so the masses marching isn’t even a warning of increasing risk for them - they control the entire political system in the US and make sure whomever is in a position to get elected for a position of political power is always in their pocket, and do not fear the desinfranchised population because they never ever moved against them.

The murder of the CEO of UnitedHealthcare by a single person seems to have achieved more in terms of scaring the powerful than even the millions that came out demonstrating against the police killing of George Floyd.

(I bet that in a place like France, still today the masses coming out even if doing nothing but marching and holding some boards, are cause for concern amongst the “elites”)

I actually saw something quite similar in the UK when I lived there: the powerful just didn’t care because even large numbers of people doing some polite marching did not damage the interest of the elites and because they had no reason to be concerned with their personal safety because the plebes had never actually rebelled against the upper classes.

That said this situation in the US is even less concerning for the elites because the crowds are so firmly focused in the puppet and disregarding the puppet masters, that even very indirectly there is zero risk for the true powers.

Maybe as some other poster suggested, a general strike would be more effective.

There is an evil witch that lives underground in the Moon and who is mind-controlling non-Rightwing votes in the US so that they don’t vote. Show me were I’m wrong.

The easiest thing in the World is to come up with a wild-ass theory without backing it with any evidence and then demanding others disprove it - I do believe that’s even a 4chan special.

Money, Propaganda, Tribalism, an undemocratic voting system…

Further, the uneveness of Power is gigantic: billionaires have way much power than common people, who are only powerful if together in large numbers and that’s incredibly hard to make happen in a structured way with everybody aligned in the same way compared with what a single billionaire can do if they feel like spending $100 million, and the entire system is set up against people organising in such a way - notice how the biggest demonstration ever in the US, the George Floyd protests, achieved pretty much nothing at all, and the police in the US is still a force of Injustice rather than Justice.

The vast majority of people are either played like fiddles or made to feel impotent and hence just turn of from politics and just live day to day.

The US is not a Democracy.