I see folks only blaming the Leopard-Ate-My-Face crowd for Trump. This is only part of the story. The larger bit is the systemic mountain of voting disenfranchisement, access, and poverty in the US. People with the most to gain often have two or three jobs to juggle, kids to ferry, and a host of other problems to drown in day-to-day. We must center on those folks if we have any chance in defeating fascism. Better than raging about idiot fascists who thought Trump would help them.
Our enemy is the corporate and billionaire class keeping us in survival mode. If we are fighting to get by with every next moment, we have no time for anything else. And when we have precious free time, it tends to be filled with immediate gratification. That's a natural response to being placed in an untenable situation. Quality of life has a correlative relationship with functioning democratic systems. Rising tide raises all boats.
Fuck the racists, fuck the fascists, don't center on them.
Poverty and fear have a big effect on personal agency. Then add systemic and structural racism and classism, where it takes 60 minutes to take the bus 5 miles to the grocery store. Where there are fewer voting places, longer lines, working two jobs, you start to see the weight of giving in and focusing on immediate needs.
The fact is that way fewer people voted in 2024 than in 2020. Simple facts show that people are disenfranchised by the system. We are getting steamrolled by the oligarchy.
Poverty rose 18% in 2023, and then another 11.5% in 2024 in the US. The capitalists have put us in a jail cell and they are the warden. It is time to break free as save each other.
Bezos, Musk, Zuckerberg, Pichai, Nadella, etc etc aren't all kissing the ring of Trump, as many have said. They paved the way to his re-election, they created the conditions for his reincarnation. They will pave over us in the process. They do not care.
Why are we seeing fewer numbers at mass protests after Trump 2.0? Poverty and disenfranchisement. Most people in dire situations see the path behind them and the mountain of crap to deal with today. They do not have the time nor do they see the effectiveness of such protests where nothing is taken away from the people in power. We need general strikes, but that takes organization and caring for the people at the bottom. We need to work together to topple the power structure.
@budsofstone Yes, we cannot forget that. All on the back of the notion "getting back to normal" or "we can't mask forever" many of us had to return to work in 2021-22 or lose our jobs. We lost too many folks to COVID and "normalcy".