this post was submitted on 30 Jun 2026
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that, and none of the people who so flippantly dismiss us all as cowards have ever seriously considered the realities of spending considerable time in the American penal system, our favorite way of breaking people who color outside the lines. They're usually people from countries where prison is a place of rehabilitation and not punishment.
Everyone wants to see another Luigi, nobody wants to go through the kind of grief he is going or will go through.
No, just last week 250 comrades were arrested from a sister group of ours in Turkey.
Turkish prisons are not very pleasant. But when you have something to strive for, you do what is right and not what is easy.
Türkiye, exemplar of justice, egalitarianism, and good government. Great example.
That was the point, that activists still organized despite the harsh prison sentences. Fear of imprisonment in the US Empire isn't a valid excuse for the under-organization of the working classes.
Fair enough
It’s not a valid excuse, but it’s a reason. Like saying that you drove the car into a tree because you were drunk- it doesn’t excuse it (in fact, in both cases it makes it a little worse, imo), but it is the reason.
Plenty of other people get drunk without driving or even drive drunk without crashing, but you’d be giving a technically true and very misleading answer if you just described the physics of the accident (driving too fast into a curve or swerving to avoid an obstacle, for example).
I don't think it's a reason that gets to the heart of the issue, though, as comparing similar situations gets us different results. There is more going on that is holding the Statesian organizers back.
Oh, absolutely. I think it’s a combination of
tldr; one) slavery, Native American genocide, structural racism, the civil war, and McCarthyism; two) manifest destiny; and three) Reagan
the country literally being founded on and steeped in multiple deeply societally divisive, violent, and genocidal institutions, the cultural worship of rugged individualism, and the simultaneous erosion of public education and removal of the fairness doctrine, which, in combination with the heavy usage of and government investment into propaganda since the 1930s (along with other factors, like the fact that we’re a huge country with only three land borders with two countries, neither of which historically had a radically different culture immediately upon crossing the border [the four countries that border Mexico used to be part of it, and before cultural homogenization, the American border towns weren’t so far off from their Mexican equivalents], so, given the high cost of international compared to domestic travel, most people (that’s just a population index for comparison with the next link, if you want) don’t really go anywhere too much different from where they are from, even fewer before air travel became commonplace, so for boomers and older)]) lead to a very malleable society, but that’s just one of many perspectives on why Americans are so docile in the face of such circumstances.
There's also the bribery from the spoils of imperialism and settler-colonialism. The aspects you bring up are often more subtle and related to the superstructure, which reinforces that which already exists at the base level. Hell, there is a semi-colony of New Afrikans within the US (the Black Belt theory), and the US itself is a settler-colony.
Founded on and steeped in isn’t base level enough? 😂
When I mean base and superstructure, I am referring to the base as the mode of production and distribution (ie, imperialist and settler-colonialist capitalism in the US), and the superstructure as the aspects of society that reinforce and maintain that. Laws, culture, art, the state, etc are all part of the superstructure. The base and superstructure reinforce each other, but the base is primary, and the superstructure secondary. This is a Marxist understanding of the subject.
Yes, I was trying to get at that reinforcement in my comment. Perhaps I was unclear.
Ah, gotcha!
Nah, I mean, I didn’t say it. I was just trying to not write a novel for once, but alas.
Fair, lol.
Most people don’t protest exemplars of justice, egalitarianism, and good government. And if 250 people were arrested while doing so, they’ve got a different understanding of either the word “protest” or the word “exemplar” from mine.
Given that, I’m not sure what answer they could have given which wouldn’t have prompted the same reaction.
I guess it was easier in Nazi Germany to keep your head down and go with the flow, too.
Don't worry, people don't forget!