Why Aren’t All Americans Protesting?

Being an American with a firm grasp of reality and a dose of empathy is pretty difficult at this time. We see the comments after articles from our neighbors. Their responses move from irrational to apologist, exhibiting a vision of the country that seems like hell to many of us. Somehow, it seems to be reassuring to them to have cruelty’s back. These comments show up all over the place, especially after any articles that pertain to what is happening in Minneapolis and the state-sanctioned murder of Renee Good.

We see anything from she shouldn’t have hit him with her car (obviously terrifying that our fellow Americans can watch that footage and think this is what happened) or that she shouldn’t have been “blocking the way” (also a frequent refrain and ironically, what many from the far right cite as their reason to be able to run into protesters with their own cars). Yes, many of the more repetitive and divisive comments are definitely from bot farms, but the fact that many are not is chilling.

The cult members among us– they contort their views to match what their leader wants them to believe. These are the Americans who were enthralled by “Pizzagate” but, having been presented with mountains of credible evidence against their leader of the same nature, are managing to find themselves in something of a pro-pedophile realm. I think we can probably understand their belief system more effectively if we look to the Manson family member behaviors as a relevant case study instead of traditional Democrat/Republican affiliation narratives.

I do believe this is an important point for our friends outside of the United States to understand. I often see many asking why we don’t simply decide not to comply. They wonder why we don’t take to the streets in such numbers that they would have to bend to our will. A major reason is that this large, though minority group of regime supporters is very much a part of our national fabric. It’s difficult to unravel something that took so many years to construct, that of a bootlicking, Empire approving, acquiescent populace. It’s not like we are dealing with one crazy grandpa in a 10-mile radius. It’s far more widespread and disturbing than this.

These are the people who see the world in black/white (often literally) and were likely raised in an authoritarian household that allowed for no nuance. Those who have bad things happen in this world, well in the minds of these individuals…it was their fault. Raped—you asked for it in some way. In debt—shouldn’t have gone to college and borrowed money for it. Shot in the head by a goon in Minneapolis—shouldn’t have been in that city, shouldn’t have been a lesbian, shouldn’t have sass-talked the man with a gun. There is no end to what they will excuse from the powerful, and no end to the victim-blaming they will engage in. It’s all to protect their tenuous feelings of safety. If they side with the oppressors, they will never be the oppressed. I bring these views out and their backgrounds not to excuse them, plenty have escaped these worldviews, but to understand them.

So that’s the huge demographic we have near us—people immune to most attempts at reason and with a blind allegiance to those with guns. To break them away from this narrative is to have their entire worldview fall apart. They would begin to worry that they could become a victim as well, without their invisible shield of loyalty to the cruel, fending off all harm. You see, the moment you say……no person should ever be raped, it’s the rapist’s fault…that no person should be in dire debt situations in a nation awash in billionaire welfare, that no person should be shot in the head by their own government for not showing proper fear of the man with a gun…that’s when it all falls apart for them. They realize that their bravado, casual cruelty and knee-jerk allegiance to Trump will not afford them any type of protection in such a world. Many of us have no idea if these people can be extracted from the cult mentality. This is what we are grappling with, those of us struggling with nuance, while the worst of the nation has no such limitations. I’m sure it is incredibly liberating in all the wrong ways to never consider that you might be wrong, and these are the fellow citizens we are dealing with.

This is one reason we haven’t all gotten our act together to thwart this in the same manner that protests in places like France play out. We simply have too many bad actors who will not show solidarity with us. They won’t support us even in something as benign as wanting a better social safety net, let alone ceasing the occupation of our cities in a manner they actually find pleasure in watching. They don’t have our back; they have the back of the oppressors. This is a very different situation from what many European nations have in place. And we’ve had decades and decades of brainwashing media that has gathered up those at risk (those raised in authoritarian households, those raised with the magical thinking inherent to prosperity gospel, those identifying as salt of the earth, rules’ followers)–they’ve gathered these people and fed them a diet of excused cruelty and out-group dehumanization. This is a very complicated situation, and I fear we might not be able to “think” our way out of it.

We are seeing many Americans fall into despair, an enormous number of them simply want to move to another country where their ideals are matched—where others won’t want to inflict cruelty and dominance on others as state policy. In my lifetime (I’m in my 50s), I’ve seen what limited social net we had be shredded. The sheer number of unhoused individuals has skyrocketed in a setting of a 62.8 trillion-dollar stock market. To give you a concept of how much money that is…if you were to equally divide that amount, it would put $190,300 in the bank accounts of every American. This is just one indicator of the type of power and wealth disparity we are now fully immersed in. This kind of affluence is out there when we have record numbers of individuals living in cars, on the streets… they are strategically placed there without aid to warn others not to rock the boat or the same will happen to them.

For all the talk of progress and modernity, where we find ourselves is a bleak place that doesn’t lend itself to most of the residents doing anything but trying to survive, let alone trying to act together to make life better. It’s an embarrassment and if one were to take the view of an anthropologist from a sane planet, they’d be shocked that any system would be set up in such a manner. They would most likely feel we degenerated from our hunter-gatherer times when such enormous hoarding and planet destruction were not even a possibility.

The lack of a social safety net is very effective in tamping down protests and work stoppages. Not having universal healthcare is a huge aspect of this, and it is again, by design. For the younger workers—those more inclined to protest—they know if they strike and lose their job, they won’t have health coverage. If they have dependents, they would not be able to care for them if they become ill or have chronic health needs. Our system claims thousands yearly who die due to lack of care, so it isn’t an idle threat.

These are just a few of the reasons we don’t have the kind of massive strikes going on that will probably be needed soon. Perhaps as people have less to lose, we will see this barrier fall.

I absolutely do not have the answers, but knowing fully what we are up against is key. It may come to some of us, realizing that we were never guaranteed a safe life and perhaps there are things worse than death. We all want to be the people who stopped the horrible events of the past; we don’t want to be the enablers of horror in the future. My wildly optimistic hope is that the cult members can be reclaimed to some sort of humanity, and the pendulum will swing away from the death-dealing philosophy of unhindered capitalism that has allowed for such a regime to even exist.

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