I find it important to dogpile and emphasize your point on the importance of organizing. I hope my echoing your message makes it louder to everyone.

The second amendment doesn’t mean shit if you don’t get some fucking friends and organize. Dropped some feds trying to unlawfully break into your home because you have the right to defend yourself in your own home? Neat, you’re a target now. Have a support network of people? You can relocate quickly, you have places to hide while the initial heat dies down, you have greater access to acquisition of legal council, you have help with cleanup, you have that many more voices to speak out on your behalf for media coverage and legal defense, you have more places to reliably keep your pets and kids safe, and if/when it really comes down to it, you have more guns to point toward your oppressors with multiplied efficiency. People tend to neglect to consider what to do in the aftermath in these situations, and the answer, like literally every other political scenario, is to have some fucking friends in the first place.

Guns or no, the most important thing is always to have a community. There is not a single scenario where gun ownership is more important than securing and cultivating a community. Guns, much like food, water, shelter, other tools, cars, medical supplies, etc is just one of the words that come after “community and”. For any political movement or even just plain survival, community is NOT optional. Go make some fucking friends. Go network. Go organize. It has been and always will be step one.

Yeah, for sure, it’s difficult to reconcile putting yourself in someone else’s shoes with what they should be ideally doing. I know I can pretty easily lose perspective myself. It’s easy to look back at Germany in the 1930s saying that people in general should have done more, but I think we do a disservice to those that actually did their best with what they had on top of just trying to survive in the first place. And for others, we don’t know all the reasons they may have had for their inaction. I don’t know if we could even honestly say they would know what to do if given the option.

And while I certainly agree with the sentiment of resistance by any means vs a dictator taking over your country and killing people extrajudicially, it’s hardly ever that black and white, neither is it really ever very clear what fighting in a way that actually matters looks like. So while it would definitely be more satisfying to hunt down ICE agents like the ghouls they are, this would only serve to escalate an already volatile situation and make matters worse for literally everyone where more peaceful and boring solutions are still available. I think our best bet rhetoric-wise is to strongly encourage good actions and movements already happening, rather than yell at and further discourage those not engaged.

So, something stands out to me here:

Since americas president is threatening to invade my country’s territory, your fake ass opinion means nothing to me.

Umm… what? What does the actions of the head of state have to do with the opinions of the people of said state? That doesn’t make any sense. That would be equivalent to me meeting a regular ass Russian person and saying “PUTIN IS DOING AN IMPERIALIST INVASION OF UKRAINE AND THREATENED TO NUKE MY COUNTRY, SO YOUR OPINION MEANS NOTHING TO ME!” The Russian people aren’t responsible for the things their government does. That’s why I always make sure to be accurate in pointing out that it’s Putin and the oligarchs doing the imperialism, not [all] Russians. I meet a Russian actively supporting Putin and his imperialist ambitions? Yeah, fuck that guy, then. But, in my personal experience, I have yet to meet a single Russian person IRL that didn’t fucking hate Putin. It’s almost as if people have lives independent of their state of residence and those that run that state.

So maybe redirect your anger at those who earned it? Something tells me that might be more constructive than directing your anger at random people for arbitrary reasons.

Aww, look at that, they think I’m wise.

… what? Who is making that argument and what are you even trying to say? What you’re describing here would not necessitate calling it war, it could more accurately be called terrorism. In the context of the post and article, yeah, they’re playing very loose with their definition of war. I would indeed call it a war if, as they propose, a state’s national guard actively took up coordinated armed resistance against the federal government,but that’s not what’s happening. They try to imply from a hypothetical war game that a university put together having parallels with what’s happening in Minnesota and Illinois right now Proves that we’re in the beginning of a civil war. This is over-sensationalized and just plain irresponsible. Not to mention they failed to demonstrate that what’s happening now necessitates that we’re “In the first phase of civil war”. The kind of civil unrest and state-sponsored terrorism we’re seeing in our country has happened countless times in the past without leading to war. So yeah, to say this is what war looks like is a very loose definition of war and generally just irresponsible.

Look, I acknowledge and appreciate the very real truth of armed resistance being a necessity in the event of a full fascist takeover, but we’re still not there yet. The republican(not the party) institutions are still in place and the American government very much so still exists as a non-fascist democratic-republic, but yes, the fascists are encroaching. To give legitimate, organized armed resistance would dramatically accelerate a fascist takeover and then we would have no other choice but to resist via full Rebellion. That is the absolute last option for reasons even beyond the pure and absolute devastation of war, which should be reason enough. To have a fighting chance as a Rebellion, you need the networks built up, which is what is happening now through these protests and mutual aid networks. You need public opinion on your side, this is being built up by the outrage response to brutalization of peaceful demonstrators. With strong enough public opinion, the military is on your side, being made up of the public. More demonstrations = more demonstrators = stronger networks built for resistance movements. This all takes time. So even if we’re playing by doomer rules as if the American government is already a lost cause, the current action by the people is necessary.

However, in the world of politics in the struggle to prevent a fascist state, all these movements have the primary purpose of enacting social change within the confines of the current system. Overthrowing the current system would necessitate mass armed conflict with a very uncertain outcome. An outcome that will very certainly have a worse short-term outcome due to the conflict and instability, and could easily have a worse long-term outcome if resistance movements prove to have weak cohesion. Generating enough political capital in the movements forming and acting today have proven many times in the country’s history to enact good and lasting change without armed Rebellion being necessary.

As much as fascist scum absolutely deserve being literally curb-stomped upon their appearance, these political movements don’t exist in a vacuum and we have to navigate the egotistical and fleeting opinion of the general public in order to effectively drive out fascism. We can cry out all we like about the public acting too soft toward fascists, but that, unfortunately, plays right into their hands.

Yeah, that’s a super loose definition of war. This is one of those things that you wouldn’t even know until after the fact anyway. Way too many people are eager for a civil war while very obviously not understanding what all that entails.

Bro, fucking what??? Have you not seen the mass protests, mass strikes, walkouts, mutual aid networks popping up, increasing pressure on elected officials, mass counter-surveillance, etc??? TF you mean Americans “won’t” act when it’s already fucking happening? Or are you one of those edgelords that thinks open armed rebellion is the only real form of action? You legitimately might be online way too much. Go outside, spend some time in the real world.

Look, I’m not explicitly stating that the only good fascist is one that’s dead.

lol, fucking bye stupid shitbags. Hope every single one of you shit your pants.

Holy shit. Directly treating the cause of cartilage loss with pill-form treatment in human trials right now. The shit we’ve been doing with medical science recently is fucking wild.

Once again, this is another ridiculous take that once again only serves to shift blame to the working class. The American people are not a fucking monolith. What you’ve done here is taken an example or two of things that vaguely happened and have generalized an entire population with those examples with non sequiturs stitching everything together. It’s a giant claim to say that “Americans have demonstrated zero capability to reign in their ruling class” on top of it being a very vague claim that certainly appears to have the tools ready to put some wheels on a goalpost. So I’m gonna go ahead and point out that for one: you’ve made the same sweeping generalization as the parent comment that you already admitted went too far. And also, you’re still making the same fundamental mistake with the sweeping generalization in that it’s not only inaccurate by its very nature, but counterproductive by further dividing the people already victimized by those in power. Don’t blame it on the American, don’t blame it on the jew, blame it on the fucking system.

… bro, this single comment isn’t even internally logically consistent. You very clearly don’t know what you’re talking about when it comes to what systems are and how they relate to people. You need to get off the internet for a bit or something. This was not a coherent response in that I’m not even sure how to engage with it. Like… yeah, war crimes are bad and way too many American troops got away with them, but what does that have to do with the rest of the population and their complicity in the systems of war perpetuated by those in power? And then the leap to religious… stuff? Also, what the fuck is “the bag”? And why are you claiming I “believe” in only that? Also, what the fuck does that even mean?

Look, the only thing I can think to respond to you is that I think you’re very outraged by what is happening (which, like, yeah, any rational person would be), but I think you might be letting your outrage cloud your judgement and direct your anger in the wrong direction. What’s happening certainly is impossibly outrageous, but what can you and I do about it right now? Fight others in the working class about it? Well, that sounds like making it worse. How about we don’t do that? Take some time to cool off?

Maybe, just maybe saying dumb shit like “death to [country]” is oversimplified bullshit that only serves to distract from what/who the real fucking enemy is. It’s the people in power that send the masses to kill each other on the battlefield, literally sending the working class to fight itself. To say that the people of America(or any country) are the system is a fundamental breakdown of understanding what the fuck a system or people even are. To equate a voting population as 100% complicit with every decision their government makes is beyond dumbfuck baby bullshit. The system is what is fucked, and the people in power are who perpetuate and make that system worse. Your dumbshit take is nothing short of insane and if I weren’t all too aware of the lunacy people fall into with online algorithms, I would be convinced you’re just another fucking troll. Although, tbf, the American government could use some unhinged takes online like this to justify more bullshit world policing.

Yeahhhhh, had he gone back alone, that probably would have been an easy murder charge. However, I can’t say I would blame him, nor do I believe I would have the same restraint he showed.

Tankies are just dishonest jackholes. I’m fairly certain like 80-90% of the tankies you meet online are state-sponsored trolls like the fucking IRA(the lame, loser Russian one, not the based Irish one), and the rest are basement-dwelling neckbeards that do next to nothing in the way of social organizing. Either way, they’re dishonest bootlicking dickheads.

Interesting. I should look it up for sure. While I’m certainly very much inherently in the camp of primarily approaching philosophy in a more traditional analytic style, I’ve become more appreciative of more artistic and “messy” packaging as of late, and this is certainly doing it for me. I love the absurd oversimplification disguised in rationality and nuance’s clothes. All that education these douchecanoes get only to never apply that same academic rigor to their worldview.

While it’s certainly true that Jim Beam can no longer honestly keep the label of ‘all American’ due to corporate structure, they have kept up much of the American tradition and culture around Kentucky bourbon by generally letting them run autonomously. However, to your point, that’s definitely not guaranteed to continue-especially if profits are gonna start being fucked with. American jobs and culture are under pressure from both trump and outside corporate organizations. It was already insulting enough that a faceless corporation took it upon itself to be a steward of a part of American culture and history, but then the shameless sellout? It’s that irresponsible behavior that makes these corporations so inherently unreliable and untrustworthy no matter how faithful they may act for however long.

What was that about bringing back American manufacturing jobs again? They keep saying the wealth will trickle down, yet I don’t think the wealth was supposed to be in this liquid form we’ve been getting…