Here's my theory why:
1969 Salsa classic - JIMMY SABATER, SALCHICHAS CON HUEVOS
All about giving some woman "sausage with eggs".
Back when the Snowden Revelations came out, the UK turned out to have even more pervasive civil society surveillance than the US, and whist in the US the result of the revelations was some walking back of the surveillance, in the UK they just passed a law to retroactivelly make the whole thing legal, quietly kicked out the editor of the newspaper who brought out the story and the Press never talked about the gigantic surveillance aparatus in the UK ever again.
So I have zero surprise that they're doing this and this is probably not even the whole tip of the iceberg, but the tip of the tip of the iceberg given the scale of surveillance over there.
Oh, I remember going to the Louvre well before Social Media and back then most people around the Mona Lisa were, just like nowadays, far more worried about taking pictures of it than actually just enjoying it.
IMHO, people always tended to be weird around famous shit and famous people.
It wasn't social media that made most people be like that. Most likely it's the reverse: social is successful because most people are like that.
I think we're talking past each other here and we agree on objectives, just not on methods.
In response to public opinion outcry, Politicians will first make empty promises, then superficial changes which are easily reversible, and only beyond that actual structural changes which are hard to reverse hence are more permanent.
The latter ones is what I meant before with "permanent". What politicians did in response to the George Floyd demonstrations was all the way up to superficial changes, but not structural changes, hence it didn't take long for things to go back to roughly the way they were, and the underlying problem of police violence in the US of which the George Floyd killing was a symptom, is now the same or even worse.
The only peaceful march kind of demonstrations (so, not things like strikes) which I know of were politicians went all the way to structural changes are the kind which lasted months (and at times they weren't actually peaceful), and it's very hard for people to sustain that without organizing.
This demonstration, on the other hand, lasted a single day. I have never heard of any demonstration that lasted a single day and changed anything in a sustained way ever anywhere in the World. I'll be happy if you find me an example to prove me wrong (as that means there's hope).
I think we both agree on the need for sustained pressure and for people not to grow complacent, and as I see it that means that people have to get involved in grassroots efforts and civil society groups to force that change and keep up the pressure until the change is structural and hence deep and near-irreversible. Merely going to a one-day demonstration won't achieve sustained change, but if it acts as a step to joining said grassroots efforts and civil-society groups that keep working well beyond that demonstration then it's a means to an end.
My point is that loudly celebrating a single day peaceful demonstration without the caveat that "it must be a start not and end", risk making many if not most feel "mission accomplished", become complacent and not do anything further, exactly the opposite of your objective of "sustained push for change were people do not grow complacent".
As I see it, if you want the people to keep on pushing there should be a "what next" after the "good job everybody" in the celebrating of this demonstration, but that's not what I see in the countless threads here in Lemmy: all I see is people celebrating it as if "showing Trump he's not liked" was the whole objective of the thing and it was achieved by this demonstration, as if "showing Trump he's not liked" is anywhere close to enough to achieve a structural change of American politics.
If people were indeed getting into the kind of organizations that can deliver the sustained effort both of us think is required, we would be seeing "this is just the start" kind of statements, but I haven't seen any yet and this together with the historical track record of peaceful demonstrations in US leads me to believe this one isn't a beginning of something more, just a one-off.
Notice the merelly starting the very sentence sentence you quote from me about the George Floyd protests.
The pigs are still often holding people down by putting their knee on that person's neck, so how exactly has the largest demonstration in America changed anything?!
Again, my point is that demonstrations have to be more than walking whilst holding a board up - at the very least they have to be opportunities to get contacts from other people with a view of joining grassroots groups for change.
If all that people do is walk and shout with lots of other people and then at the end of it go home with a feeling of achievement and do nothing further, all you get out of it is what you got with the George Floyd ones - empty promises from politicians and no actual change - when what all those millions of American should have gotten was a restructuring of policing in the US.
People here are way over-celebrating something which means very little unless we see that it has led to many following it with getting involved in politics and/or grassroots movements - it's premature and it makes me suspect that for many who participated this one demonstration was it and they aren't following it through with next steps.
It really depends if it's used offensively or as part of a broader pattern were somebody has more power than another person, and the one with the least power does such "jokes" - I don't think the "meek" using that technique to somehow get back at the dominant is correlated with rightwing tendencies.
For those who use it offensively (especially if they're dominant person and use it on the non-dominant as a way to insult them which can be walked back if 3rd parties take it badly), yeah I agree that it's commonly done by those with a kind of personality which is highly correlated with being a rightwinger.
I'm not American. If I went there to lead the revolution I would end up in El Salvador.
I did, however, got involved in politics in two countries I live in and did a lot of campaigning for them, so I've actually done the deed as far as I could rather than merely talk about it, and did so further than just demonstrations.
Demonstrations are nice as a way for people to know that they're far from alone in their concerns, but they're worthless if not leveraged into helping make or grow grassroots organization to change the actual underlying problems that results in somebody like Trump getting elected again and again (and I'm pretty sure that if that doesn't change, when Trump is out somebody else like him or worse will eventually get elected).
The Georgy Floyd demonstrations are a great example of what happens if demonstrations aren't leveraged to grow civic-society movements for change: you get some vague promises from politicians and then nothing actually changes.
I just feel that people here are treating these demonstrations as some kind on getting near the finish line when they're at best (and hopefully) a beginning, and not even a beginning of the end but and beginning of the beginning, and they should be treated as opportunities to get the ball rolling on things that can actually snowball into real change.
If all you do after a demonstration is pat yourself on the back for having "done something" whilst you don't even have some contacts for groups of people you're thinking of joining for further actions, you've just done exactly what the actual powers that control the country wanted you to do: defused your anger whilst not starting the ball rolling on real change.
Look, it can totally seen how the protests give hope to others by showing them that "they're far from alone in their concerns" and doing so in a way which is independent of mainstream political parties (which is good, since in my experience when political parties capture protests, they use such movements for their own personal good, in the process weakening the original movement).
In fact I totally approve of the protests and (even though I'm not American) I'm happy with just how big they were because maybe American has enough good people to make it a better country in the World stage (plus, frankly, I have some American acquaintances from minorities and don't want to see them suffer).
What I fear is that people here in Lemmy are crazily over-celebrating the protest as some kind of ending in itself when it's at best a beginning, and not even the beginning of the end but the beginning of the beginning.
If these protests aren't leveraged to organize grassroots movements to start doing things like guerrilla (in the marketing sense, rather than violent sense) campaigns to oust the crooked politicians no matter what their party is and weaken the influence of Money in politics, they're worthless, same as the George Floyd protests ended up being worthless because they didn't led to any organized follow through to force politicians to restructure policing in America.
So my point is that people need to keep their eye on the long term solution for America's problems, and that doesn't stop with kicking Trump out, it requires a far deeper cleanup of the American political system and addressing the problems of common Americans so that another guy like Trump (or, more likely, worse) doesn't get eventually get in power after Trump is out.
Trump is not the disease, he's a symptom, so merely Trump out isn't going to cure it.
I'm still trying to get a response to my original point that
"There are two sides. The Right and everyone else. The Right wins because they stay on topic and vote. Until the rest of us fall in line like they do, they’ll keep on winning."
does not logically follow from
"Donald Trump won the election in 2016 over Hilary Clinton"
and hence the latter does not prove the former.
The whole ploy of the other post in, when I pointed that out, demanding that I do the impossible and provide a "specific" and "detailed" plan to "get Trump out" (as if I'm some kind of omniscient divinity that can produce a specific and detailed plan for something as complex as that out of the top of my mind), followed by using my inability to do the impossible as evidence that I must be wrong about my earlier point, is just a common argumentation ploy to distract away from the point I made rather than address it, and specifically a ploy that the MAGAs constantly use.
Of course I don't have a "specific" and "detailed" plan to "get Trump out", and neither has the poster who demanded that I provided one in the full expectation that I couldn't - if it was that easy that even an internet rando could come up with a "specific and detailed plan" for it, it would've already happened.
If you read the thread back you will notice that I made a good faith attempt at providing at least some ideas, whilst the other poster has not put forward a single positive solutions oriented idea, only criticism, starting by criticizing everybody and later moving to criticizing my inability to do the impossible.
"Always criticism never solutions" is exactly the political strategy of populists. People who want to try and solve things, even if they think it's going to be hard as shit, don't spend their time in "criticize everybody" mode.
You're lying about what I wrote
Quote the exact words were I "blamed everybody" or even "asked for a solution".
Once again you're using a ploy straight out of the Fascist Manual of Argumentation: "When accused of something, accuse the other person of the same, lying if need be."
From the Fascist Manual of Argumentation you so far have:
If you were arguing in good faith you would've either walked back on that theory, refined it some more, or tried to actually show there was a logical link between "Donald Trump winning the election in 2016 over Hilary Clinton" and "There are two sides. The Right and everyone else. The Right wins because they stay on topic and vote.".
You did not. Instead you went for the "Demand the impossible and when the impossible is not delivered claim that it proves the other person is not wrong" ploy, same as the MAGAs do.
Which funnily means the Spaniards tend to have dinner at the same time as the Portuguese, who use GMT and tend to dine at 8 PM.