Guns were a protection from the government in 1800s, not anymore. Arm the unions with missile launchers.
this post was submitted on 02 May 2026
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Well yeah. It takes violence to stop violence, and we've been brain washed in schools with the "Zero Tolerance Policy" that retaliating is worse than being a bully. Kids who defended themselves from aggressors often were either the only ones punished, or punished far worse than the instigator. That's been going on for at least 2-3 decades in said schools. It has obviously made a bunch of adults too afraid of doing the right thing.
It's why we hold parades instead of protests with the threat of escalation. If we really wanted to make changes, Republicans and their minions(ICE) would not have homes to live in, or comfortable lives. Same for their enablers.
We would have taken them off the board and held special elections as populace. Still can, and will still need to when we have finally had enough. That or a foreign power will do it for us, but then they get to make the rules instead of "We The People".
You're very much on the right track, but I think it goes much much deeper than violence. It goes to self-reliance.
Go back to the time of the Framers. If you wanted something to happen, literally anything at all, you had to do it yourself. Criminal stealing your shit? By the time you get to town to ask for help he'll be gone, so either say goodbye to your shit (and maybe your wife too) or grab your rifle and confront him. Government not doing what you want? Grab your pitchfork and head to City Hall, or run for office yourself. Feeling hungry? Better start cooking. Want to have meat this winter? Better start raising a cow today. Bully picking on you? Better learn to fight his ass. Your house is broken? Better grab a hammer and a saw because nobody else's gonna help fix it.
Over the last 100ish years, that attitude has been slowly changing. Individual self-reliance has given way to a sort of mutualist service society where self-reliance is no longer the norm, it's no longer the exception, it's become almost an outlier.
Criminal stealing your shit? Call the police and hide until they arrive. Government not doing what you want? Write a letter or whine about it online. Feeling hungry? Grab your phone because food's an Uber Eats order away. Your house is broken? Call a repairman or a carpenter.
What's missing there? Any kind of self-reliance, self-empowerment to solve your own problems. Every problem involves asking or paying someone else to fix it for you.
I argue that the result of this is a society of people who've forgotten that they DO have the power to solve their own problems.
I don't blame malice for this, I blame a combination of laziness along with a LOT of well-meaning people and policies that only further disenfranchise the populace from their own agency, usually in the name of safety. You mention zero tolerance for bullying, that's certainly one as it teaches the victim not to fight back. Police say the same thing though- police always say if confronted with a threat just give the criminal what they want and run away when you can.
There's pockets of resistance to this sort of attitude, but they are largely isolated and focused on their own agendas without real connection. The most obvious might be gun owners and the concealed carry movement. But there's plenty of others- the open source community, the right to repair movement, the maker community, the free range parenting movement, and just about any other DIY community. They're all focused on their own individual niche, but the attitude is the same-- you CAN do ____ yourself, you DON'T need someone else to do it for you.
We need more of that. And I think it starts with school curriculum. If I was in charge, I'd take one academic semester out of high school (or at least a few credit hours) and devote it to purely empowering and constructive practical lessons. Wood shop, auto repair, plumbing/electrical, coding, cooking, industrial design, financial planning, etc. I don't think this should be optional electives to bypass, I believe these lessons are just as important as reading writing and maths, because if we create kids that are book smart but life stupid, we're doing them a disservice. And that's what we're doing now.
For our society to find our way out of this, we (the population) need to empower ourselves, recognize that we are NOT helpless, and take back agency over our lives.
Unfortunately I think that won't happen until either a. a real leader comes along who can energize people- think Obama before his first term, but with actual balls to FIGHT rather than watering everything down. Bernie could have been that. But I think we need another MLK type person. Or b, things get a good bit worse, for the population to stop desperately trying to stay afloat in a rigged game and instead doing a table-flip rejection of the rigged system.
Au contraire, a truly "mutualist" society would never fall for the bullshit that is happening.
If everyone had trust and a good working relationship with their neighbors and solidarity with their working class comrades, the US capitalist class and therefore the government in its current form would quickly cease to exist.
The problem is specifically that the US capitalists inserted themselves as unavoidable middlemen into every aspect of US life. Notice how you're not getting food from your community kitchen, you're getting food from Uber Eats. You're not usually calling a repairman from your local community, you're calling a company that sends one out to you. You're not getting help from your community militia, you're getting it from an armed wing of the bourgeois government.
(ironically, this was possible to do through years or "rugged individualism" propaganda, that you are repeating here; other things like car dependency also made things worse)
This lack of local community is a big part of why there is so little organized protest. It's very difficult to rile up your neighbors to take up arms and meaningfully protest when you barely even know them. This would apply even more in your imagined scenario of everyone becoming individualists who raise their own cows - people wouldn't even have time to protest because they would spend all of it on their own survival, and those who stick their head up are easily arrested and thrown into jail, with noone to protect them.
Everything you have written here, I agree with. I think the self-reliance or even community reliance is what's missing here. That service reliance is a big factor in our learned helplessness.
It truly is just a giant mess, with many confounding factors. I hope others take the time to read what you wrote.
To assume that humans en masse are weak is quite foolish, but I suspect their intent is more prodding for people to 'do something'.
We're aware of the issue most of us didn't cause. Just as other countries are currently dealing with their own artificially placed authoritarians (à la epstein and bannon).
To attempt change in the public eye immediately puts you in danger and as such is unwise. Furthermore, many people are not made for such things.
Eventually there will come a time for most of us where a normal life cannot exist, but it's a slow burn, not an explosion.
We need to put this into perspective and compare it to how Hitler turned an entire country into dumbly complacent followers & murderers & enablers. We look back at that and ask, "Why didn't somebody stop him? Why was everybody following his orders?"
"Why didn't Feudal Peasants rise up against theie Feudal Lords? Were they stupid?"
-asks the modern day corporate indentured serf from his company-provided cubicle residence.
My point is that it's literally happening again right now. Why can't it be stopped? Someone please tell me.
The problem I fear is always a spiritual one.
Materialism and spiritualism are polar opposities with the latter being the one that one incentivises someone to act in the face of death.
For the former, armies could be carpet bombing their house into the dirt and if they still feel more attached to what little wealth he has, he may very well fight for that wealth on the side of tyrants.
For the latter, they could lose everything down to their very bones, but if there's so long as a single breath that remains, they would use it against the injustice set upon them.
It's difficult to unify people to even achieve something in an hour, let alone divorce them of their belongings for a higher cause.
When you're right you're right
The American Civil war never ended, did it?
For a country with so many guns, they're not very good shots.
France isn't willing to bankrupt themselves again for the colonies.
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