Actually we can do a lot more than just vote. We can demand justice for our own war crimes, and not be complacent about it. We can hold our own democracies accountable for the mass murder that we pay for. We can absolutely demand that prosecutions occur - or else, what else are our claims of liberal, free democracy good for?

The apathy you describe allows the bombs to continue to fall. Every 15 minutes. For the past 26 years, mostly on innocent human beings.

We can absolutely dissuade the continued dehumanization of cultures our ruling elite deem inferior and thus qualified for destruction. We can absolutely reach outside our own cultural bubbles and discover the truth of those we are taught, by authorities, to hate.

We can resist. We must resist. Or else, what are our societies good for?

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27183 2 days ago | parent [-]

The resistance you're talking about only works if like 3% of the population take to the streets. Once you see police officers marching with protesters that's when they'll start to listen. That's only ever happened once. It'll only happen again if a large number of american kids (tens or hundreds of thousands) are dying in foreign lands for years on end--i.e. not soon. That's why our leaders wage low intensity wars.

The oil crisis we're talking about here is knocking on our door right now. No amount of protesting is going to stop it.

When things get bad enough you'll see resistance. We're not there yet.

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MomsAVoxell 2 days ago | parent [-]

It all starts somewhere. Unless we, the people, actually rise and use our power to stop them, warrior narcissists will be lighting fires in perpetuity.

>The oil crisis we're talking about here is knocking on our door right now. No amount of protesting is going to stop it.

True, not until Americans start feeling the pinch for all the wars they have allowed to happen, in their name.

No time like the present. Demand justice for your war crimes, Americans.

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27183 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

Don't get me wrong, I think yours is a good example. It's important for people to have an example to reference when they want to resist but don't know how to do it, or who to contact, or where to start. But I don't believe resistance will accomplish anything very meaningful anytime soon.

[edit] half baked thought: I wonder how the resistance phenomenon interacts with nuclear weapons. In all the prior wars in human history, as far as I am aware, there were small pacifist or anti-war movements. But only in the big post-nuclear great powers proxy conflict that happened in Vietnam was there a sufficiently large antiwar movement to actually accomplish something. I wonder if we humans can somehow subconsciously sniff out cowardice in our leadership. Nuclear weapons have made all nations cowards--nobody is willing to lay it all on the line and fight anymore because the consequences are too great. All that is to say, I wonder if we're all a hell of a lot more warlike and savage than we'd like to admit. I'm sure this is a well studied topic and I'm totally ignorant of the scholarship so someone please chime in and straighten this bullshit out :p

	▲	MomsAVoxell a day ago \| parent \| next [-]
		There are a few things we can do about the nuclear situation and the state-level cowardice you rightly identify. We can start uncovering the secrets for how those nuclear weapons are being used against us. For example, nuclear blackmail is a very, very real situation in the West right now - there are states which are getting their way with human rights abuses at massive scale, because they threaten the nuclear option. Which states? Under which conditions are the threats being made? With resistance, we call for war crimes prosecutions for our own criminals. But we also address the state secrecy dilemma: the corruption of all governments begins with the secrets they keep. What are those secrets? Reveal them. Demand that there be no more “national security secrets” held like a sword of Damocles over the citizens’ heads - reveal them. Resistance is not just protest. It is Wikileaks and Snowden and others. It is constant, non-stop, pressure on the ruling elite to have their crimes revealed and prosecuted. It is the Epstein prosecutions, actually happening. It is the pressure from the entire world - not just the local population - to have these secrets declassified and revealed, sordid details and all. The nuclear threat is real. Who are making these threats, and what are their crimes?
	▲	salawat a day ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Our technological grasp has exceeded our societal capability to responsibly wield and direct it. This same situation was absolutely rife in philosophical circles around the world wars of the last century, (see Heidigger's writings on technology), and the stakes are only higher now. We are now down the last generation to have eye witnessed and executed nuclear Holocaust. Their tapes are all that remain. The first generations to truly industrialize the process of bringing death (rise of the machine gun, poison gas, concentration camps, weaponization of aircraft and the flying machine), have likewise, left the experiential pool, leaving only their written, and otherwise recorded material behind which does a fat lot of good if no one can be arsed to actually read, watch, or be affected by these cautionary accounts. Throw in the increasing centralization of wealth and power, the unchecked consolidation running rampant, and massive arbitrage of the third world to avoid paying for the externalities of our industrial bases, and the knock-on consequences arising from climate change and concomitant political destabilization, and the stage is set for some very, very bad times if we do not mature and get very damn serious, very quick.

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cindyllm a day ago | parent | prev [-]

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