I mean, we watched that happen.

He led a violent insurrection against the US government with the goal of lynching congress and his own VP.

Zero chance.

There is no world in which trump trusts someone to protect him AFTER he gives up his power. Because he backstabs everyone the second they aren’t useful to him.

Saying “I don’t care what you do, not my problem” is very much losing “moral authority”.

For decades (really centuries but…), The West (Western Europe and North America and the paler parts of Oceania) have claimed to be the moral arbiters of the world. Much of colonialism was built around the idea of “civilizing” savages. And many of the wars (cold and otherwise) of the 20th century were similarly built around this.

The US is speedrunning the erosion of any form of credibility or high ground. But The West as a whole aren’t that far behind. But the “good” news is that this is nothing new? NOBODY cared about Palestine until it got caught in the news cycle a few years back (and the Uyghurs, among others, can pound sand because anything else might hurt the supply chain). And there is a reason we all expected the most recent War in Ukraine to end with russia murdering a bunch of people, stealing more land, and doing it again in another decade.

Because intervening would have been messy.

Many of those problems are the kinds of things that will just never get critical mass amongst a domestic population. Because… it genuinely doesn’t impact them. Like, let’s take the Genocide in Palestine? If you were to believe online lefties? It is the greatest sin ever and THE most important topic on the planet. But most of them never even knew it was a thing until the attack a few years back. And they STILL mostly just know it because their favorite celebrities started talking about it (which is why they still actively ignore all the other genocides…).

But the “good” news is that things are RAPIDLY boiling over due to oil prices. But that will likely manifest more as protesting “the price at the pump” rather than whether we do or don’t send the marines to die in Iran.

But yeah. I strongly encourage going to local protests and talking to the organizers. No Kings… I mostly checked in on a few buddies and dipped. Because there are plenty of people who are thinking beyond filming a tiktok of singing a Hamilton song. They just aren’t really advertising on social media.

I would very much argue that the anti-ice protests were the reaction and escalation. And what “No Kings” should have been in the first place.

There was a problem. We had very specific demands. Folk got out. They stood in the face of violence. They showed they were willing to protect their fellow humans. Hell, they even showed they were willing to engage in a (limited) general strike.

And guess what happened? Ice bitched out and ran away from Minneapolis and Chicago and so forth. Yeah, they are still there to a lesser degree. But the occupation ended and we are back to just a moderate hellscape rather than constant terror of being outside while brown.

Contrast that with No Kings where… there is no actionable anything or even unified message. It is just people standing around dancing and putting on costumes.

Its a cliche but “What do we want? X. When do we want it? Now, but really within N days is fine” is such an effective chant. Because it provides a clear deescalation path that gives the protestors what they want.

The No Kings protests are… I have a lot of issues with how much they feel like controlled opposition and pageantry. Also, weirdly, an excuse for camera nerds to flex (good luck taking that giant DLSR to a “real” protest where you will get tear gassed and people will panic and shove while trying to get away). And I forget if we ever came down on whether the national organizers were shady as hell or not?

But understand that the main point of “protests” like this are to get that list of names and to get people used to actually getting outside (which is also a complaint where it is a twice a year parade on a Saturday morning…). Those names equate to funding and getting more bodies for other protests.

And… the official line is going to be what people can do. And that is very much getting involved in local politics. We can’t fix this hellscape through voting but we CAN do harm minimization at home. And understand that voting in local elections is how the christofacists got so much power. When everyone else ignores the school board, they are stuffing it so they can kill LGBTQ+ folk. When everyone else was laughing at not knowing what a comptroller even is, they were getting their people into a position where they can actively kill budgets and social programs. And so forth.

But also understand that a huge part of these kinds of protests is networking. Get to know the community organizers and spend enough time talking with them that they don’t think you are a cop. At which point they obviously tell you to vote locally and nothing else.