They have simply have no way to wrap their heads around the idea of doing anything about it. The CIA was created as a weapon for the government to point at their enemies. They don’t know how to respond when that government is the enemy.

Take a good hard look at how rapidly Trump and his team are expanding the powers of the president. Those constitutional limits are close to breaking point already.

Trust me, I really, really hope you’re right. But please understand that these new fascists have spent a lot of time thinking about these problems and how they’re going to solve them.

Anyone believing there will be any more free and fair elections in the US isn’t paying attention.

It took less than 100 days for Hitler to consolidate power, and Trump is following the exact same playbook.

You can hold leaders to account, and you should - there’s plenty to hold them to account for - but that still doesn’t answer the question of what is to be done in this present moment right now.

You want a general strike, but you have no idea who is going to organize one, or how they’re going to do it, because you’d rather feel justified in your outrage over grudges of the past than actually see anything useful done.

You’re more interested in feeling righteous than you are in succeeding, and that’s going to get you exactly nowhere.

This is part of the equation that they’ve proven themselves consistently awful at assessing properly.

There was this guy who did a bunch of interviews with super wealthy people about their apocalypse shelter plans, and he was like “What stops all the poors from killing you and taking your stuff?”

And they’re like “Oh, we have ex-Navy SEAL private security details, we’re good.”

So the guy asks them “What stops the SEALs from killing you and taking your stuff?”

They were stumped. Not a one of them had a good answer. Like, one guy floated having the only password to the vault where all the supplies are kept, as if Navy SEALs don’t know how to torture information out of someone. Waterboarding was that guy’s best case outcome.

They really, really don’t understand that they need us, but we don’t need them. And the only thing keeping them alive is that we haven’t really figured that out yet either.

The right wing assholes whining about free speech don’t actually want free speech. You can see that in the campaigns to remove books from school libraries all across the country. All across the world the right are demonstrating time and again how little they actually support free speech.

What they want is the freedom to spew hate speech, which is the only kind of speech that a tolerant and free society should not tolerate. All other forms of speech they will gladly and eagerly suppress unless it agrees with them.

At some point it probably becomes more valuable to offer jobs that barely keep people alive than it does to deal with the sheer number of unemployed people who are now ready to burn everything down.

Then again, capitalism has never been good at externalities.

As someone doing the hiring, referral hires fucking suck. I want the best candidate, not the most connected candidate, and I don’t want to have to deal with the bullshit company politics when the referral hire doesn’t work out.

Again, where are your alternatives? If these leaders suck as badly as you say they do, then who should people be looking to instead?

No idea why you deleted that comment. You’re right.

The bank bailouts in 2008 didn’t cause the tiniest bit of inflation. Again, Mark Blyth calls this out specifically in his book and many of his lectures. The predominant question plaguing economists in the 2010s was “Where the fuck is the inflation?”

Japan has an incredibly high debt to GDP ratio, and their main economic constraint right now is too little inflation.

Once you start looking for the examples they’re there. This whole idea that government spending = inflation is a total myth.

You have the power to build up leaders rather than tearing them down.

And if nothing else, you have the power to say nothing. If you’re not going to offer better alternatives, at least make the positive choice not to attack the people taking action.

And, just to be absolutely clear, if you carefully read back through everything I’ve said here, you’ll see that I never said “don’t criticize.” Criticism can still build up, can still inspire others to join a common cause. But you’re not doing that. You’re just cutting down what’s there and planting nothing in its place.

If you read the article you’ll find the context, which is that Australia recently enacted a law restricting social media sites to ages 16+.

The point is that children are still routinely using social media despite the law being in force.

No, see, that’s just your excuse for why you’re tearing down this particular leader.

You didn’t come in here saying “I stand with Bernie, but I wish he’d call for stronger action like a general strike up front.” You came charging in with your laundry list of grievances to tell everyone why you think Bernie is a pathetic coward and no one should listen to him.

But, and this is key, you’re not offering any alternatives. Are you the leader organizing the general strike? If so, it might be time to share some info on that. If not, then who the fuck is it? Because if all you’re able to do is complain that none of the people stepping up are perfect enough for your personal standards, you’re just another part of the problem.

Get involved with anyone who is organizing acts of resistance, however small. There is a very real danger that your democracy isn’t going to make it to the midterms if no one acts now.

Small acts of resistance build bigger acts of resistance, and getting involved builds networks. You need to get plugged in to the people who are trying to do anything, even the small stuff, because they’re the people who will be calling you up when it comes to the big stuff.

Don’t ask me, ask the people in your own country organizing acts of resistance right now. Get involved, ask them what they need, ask them how you can help. Even small acts of resistance add up. Doing something, anything, inspires others to get involved, and it builds networks. Eventually, you’re probably looking at something like a general strike, but you’re never going to get there if people don’t start organizing in small ways right now.

If you love us, put a stop to this. Because right now Trump is literally spouting the exact same rhetoric about Canada that Putin was spouting about Ukraine before the invasion.

How many of us get to die at the hands of American guns and bombs while you say “It’s OK, we still love you, it’s just our President who’s an asshole”?

With fucking what? You have the most powerful economy on earth, and you’ve used it to build the most powerful military on earth. Invading the US would be the most diasterous war the world has ever seen.

Wake the fuck up. If you guys don’t fix this shit, we are all completely and utterly fucked.

No one is coming to save you.

Here’s what I find really telling; throughout this conversation there have been plenty of opportunities for you to say who it is you think people should be looking to for leadership instead. The fact that you haven’t tells me that you don’t have an answer to that question. You want to tear down the people who are stepping up, but you don’t want to build anyone up in their place. Where does that leave you?

He’s literally touring around the country organizing people and you from the comfort of your chair want to yell about how you want to “see the walk”?

Jesus fucking Christ.