Summary
Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez condemned Donald Trump and Elon Musk at a packed Arizona rally, accusing them of harming working-class Americans and promoting oligarchy.
Sanders denounced corporate CEOs as “major criminals” exploiting workers, while Ocasio-Cortez called for stronger Democratic leadership.
Rallygoers urged Ocasio-Cortez to challenge Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer after he supported a Republican funding bill.
The rally, part of Sanders’ “Stop Oligarchy” tour, follows criticism of the Democratic Party’s weak response to Trump’s agenda and features further events in Colorado and Arizona.
I wish you Americans would deal with this crap before I end up getting drafted to defend my country from the orange porcine dementia patient.
What do you suggest Americans do? Say someone is a working class American who didn’t vote for Trump. They can barely make ends meet and have no power or political sway. What does that person do? I’m not trying to be funny, I’m simply interested in your take and perspective as a non-American.
I saw something recently that was talking about how individualism has led us to this situation. Everyone is thinking what they can do. We lost our collectivist spirit. We don’t think about what we can do.
An individual has essentially no power. A group does. We need to get better at organizing. This is made hard because we are so separated from each other, driving individually to work, then back home, largely to houses where you don’t interact with anyone else. We have basically no third places anymore where you’d typically organize. This situation was designed, and it’s going to be hard to get out of, but we need to get better at forming groups and organizing.
Great point. I’d argue that an extension of individualism is consumption.
What was the majority positive response to Luigi? Consumption.
People asked where to buy stickers and T-shirts. T-shirts.
Nothing can be fixed until it’s understood to be a problem, and AOC from her stump speeches and emails seems to at least recognize the problem you’re pointing that American systems are essentially “massively scaled up isolation from others”.
Rugged individualism has failed us. It’s going to take a reclamation of collectivism to fix our problems.
They are powerless if everyone stops giving them power
The country is nothing without its workers
Of 10-20% of the population actively protested and actively tried to halt any functioning of society, you’d be surprised at how much you could get done. A that large mass of people is absolutely hell to control and subdue, and they certainly cannot arrest even a significant fraction of them. If the threat of protests of that scale were real every time they tried some fuckery, they would give in very quickly
The problem is that almost everyone thinks like you say, “what am I to do? I’m powerless”, and give up before even trying
I’d love leaderless movements to have a better track record than they do, but the reality is that I think they fail much more often than they succeed in this country.
People can’t just quit their jobs and occupy wall street forever.
I am aware it’s difficult, but my point was that you aren’t powerless
As an unconnected individual with a middling net worth, you are powerless in this system. Whole movements of people are powerless. The only way this could possibly work is with the numbers and probably a leader organizing it.
And while we’re at it, why don’t people in China have the freedom to speak out against their government and not have censorship? Maybe if they all just got together in a big public square and really protested, I bet that would end really well.
I mean, if they all did it, it absolutely would make shit happen
The whole issue stems from most people wanting to just keep their heads down
(The parent commenter was making a Tiananmen Square Massacre reference.)
I am aware
People in numbers have ALL the power. I know Americans have been trained for defeatism, but look at what protest, resistance, and strikes can do overseas.
If you have any spare time, even half an hour here or there, go to protests. Connect with like-minded folks.
If it comes down to that then I’m sure me and some of my fellow Americans will rebel and put the 2nd amendment to the test.
Face it. Your blaming dirt farming peasants that John the bastard is going to crusade your lands.
There’s literally nothing we can do about it besides die as well in most cases.
So instead of fighting now you’re just going to allow yourself to get drafted later? How is that in any way preferable
The British empire was brought to its knees by normal patriots to form the country you’re making excuses not to defend. Coward.
That is such a gross and fundamental misunderstanding of the Revolutionary War it’s almost comical. Probably most important to note is that the Revolution was bankrolled by U.S. oligarchs, and we received a lot of help.
That sounds like Russian propaganda.
While not that untrue, it’s a pretty bleak interpretation of history.
You could argue the founding fathers were oligarchs but remember… they toppled a monarchy. Doesn’t get more autocratic than that.
You could also imagine some “oligarchs” could see that they benefit from a more equal society.
At the end of the day, the founding fathers clearly support rebellion. Say what you will about them but they were not hypocrites. From the Declaration of Independence:
“That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it”
Rebellion is your duty.
Sorry, you’re saying the people who were committed to making a Land of the Free that excluded blacks and women weren’t hypocrites? The Founding Fathers are some of the biggest fucking hypocrites of all time.
The only thing they hated is that they couldn’t be the British aristocracy. They absolutely were oligarchs and the vast, vast majority did not due it out of noble reasons. They did it because they wanted more profits.
As well as the indigenous and non-landowners.
U.S. oligarchs HATE competition. They conned the rubes of 1776 to fight the British monarchy so they could have a monopoly on graft in the colonies, the U.S. finally got pulled kicking and screaming into WW1 and WW2 because they hated the competition from Germany et al, and not out of any love for Europe. The support for Hitler among the U.S. ruling class was high and well documented, including Prescott Bush.
Slavery abolitionist and Founding Father Thomas Paine would agree with you. He literally called Washington a hypocrite (and incompetent) in an open letter.
One of the few “Founding Fathers” that I tend to like.
Okay sure. Just ignore the main point I was making. Sounds like a thing a coward would do. Have fun living under tyranny.
Your point is based on fundamentally flawed information. You can make the argument that Americans should engage in revolution! But I would point the example towards the great work of unions during the Industrial Revolution, rather than pointing to one of the many times the U.S. rose up to blindly support their oligarchs.
How is my information fundamentally flawed, exactly? Did the USA have a revolution? Did the very same people who took part in that revolution also turn around and clearly state that it is a right to rebel?
I agreed with your idea that they were oligarchs. How is that relevant? The revolution had help, how is that relevant? Are all oligarchs the same? Is that really a fair claim to make? What about the French? I don’t even feel like you have an argument, you’re just trying to justify your inaction.
I’m in favour of you using whatever example you need to make it make sense to you. Unions or whatever.
I’m not saying they didn’t have help. I’m saying you have to start it yourselves! No one is going to swoop in and save you. YOU have to do it! Only then will you start getting others to join.
If you tell yourself you’re powerless, then you are. You sit there doing nothing while making excuses for it.
YOU ARE NOT POWERLESS. Together you are strong. Get up and act like it.
I know it sounds fun to believe that friendship or togetherness can topple a nation that’s willing to drone strike its own citizens, but the truth is that the game is so heavily rigged in the U.S. that we have a lot of needs. We need guns, we need intelligence, and we need enough peer to peer outreach to actually organize. Without third-party assistance, it’s pretty hard to go beyond the local protesting we’ve already been doing.
Everyone likes to fantasize about Jan 6th without realizing there were big financial groups working on outreach, organization, and supporting travel to the capital to make that happen. There is no money for the left in the U.S. You really want to yell at us, at least donate to organizations like Indivisible first.
Hey man, whatever you need to tell yourself to feel good about doing nothing.
American here. Our boys are nearly draft age. This shit is terrifying.