this post was submitted on 21 Aug 2026
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I appreciate the thoughtful reply. I was referring to the current situation with our government when I said no one will stop them. I assure you I am working to elect their replacements. Even then, if they get total control of Congress, there will still be two years before they can get control of the executive.
Once they have that, it will be several years before they clean out the operators behind all of This crap.
We are fighting the flock surveillance. I am not exhibiting defeatism. I am exhibiting resignation. It is a fact that with the powers that are currently in control, nobody is going to do anything. In fact, they are Increasingly helping it to get worse.
Yes, my comment was pointing out that the exact mentality you just expressed again is a form of learned helplessness. You do not need to defer to the US federal govt to challenge corporations; especially so if, as you said, it has dropped the veil that it was going to do anything in the first place. Don't get disappointed when Dems don't do anything themselves -- as they have shown many times -- since they are, afterall, a neoliberal party that has also participated in or facilitated the erosion of US business regulation and antitrust enforcement. You're going to be exercising your power more effectively by dedicating your time and hope not to their political victories, but getting as involved as you can in local movements that typically have much more immediate and effective results.
you mean like elecing progressives, being vocal in my town? well, duh. does not change the fact that the current federal government is actually suportive of the surveillance and is more likely to harass protesters than listen to them.
No, dude, you can't say "duh" when you have misunderstood multiple times now. I am saying to you that you cannot rely on "electing progressives," and being vocal in your town, even if those are tools you also cannot discard. Liberals like this tend to have difficulty understanding politics outside of the institutions that they have been raised to believe are synonymous with politics.
Brian Thompson's shooting was a political act in the same way that voting, rent strike, and mutual aid foodplans are. Yes, the liberal state is going to punish you for not abiding by the sensibilities that it finds favourable, which is also a good indication that if you are not punished by it, you are doing something to its benefit. I know you are likely to be harassed, injured, or even killed by law enforcement if you challenge this system, and you should learn to accept that risk if you really want this to change. Reliance on liberals to fix their own system has failed, and there is no longer time to wait both because the conditions are worsening globally and their responses to those worsening conditions will be authoritarian, as you seem to recognize.
I see. From what you wrote, it sounds like you're saying I need to be a revolutionary and go out and fuck with people. I'm not ready to do that on my own.
Further, I don't have a strong social network of support. Anything I would do would be a lone wolf operation. And I don't have the training or experience for it. Lone Wolf operations fail and do not change the world.
Plus I have a child who's not old enough to live in the world on his own. I am not going to take away the support he needs by throwing my life away.
Dealing with a surveillance state like the United States of America requires a whole lot more finesse and sophistication than you seem to think is necessary.
"If you prefer something that remains within liberal institutions, state-level movements to define AI as price fixing would likely have an easier time to gain popular traction since AI is widely hated at this point. This isn’t to say you can’t complain without volunteering to shoot Delta’s CEO, but just that responding to this with, “the govt isn’t doing anything which means nothing can be done,” exemplifies the sort of learned helplessness that characterizes American neoliberal politics at a street level." from my first comment ^
No, I said the exact opposite of that the first time. You are choosing to not excercise the power at your disposal, stop acting like you're powerless. Nobody is telling you to do a "lone wolf" operation, they're telling you that this work requires actual, y'know, work. That means, yes, taking time out of your responsibilities to get involved, to contribute what you can, and at the very least, not promoting defeatist and fatalist arguments that only work to appeal to apathetic and privileged liberals. No, that is not without understanding of the pervasiveness of US surveillance, and you really aren't in a position to act like you understand this more than I do after being unable to comprehend the clearest language I could apply multiple times.
You want to do nothing because it is more comfortable? That is of course allowed and encouraged by the state, and you'd be like every other lib on this site once they realize the gravity of this situation, but then you can't act entitled to tell others that this is inevitable.