Why Aren't People in the US Rising Up Like Those Elsewhere in the World?

[American2020]

https://www.commondreams.org/views/2019/11/14/why-arent-people-us-rising-those-elsewhere-world?utm_campaign=shareaholic&utm_medium=referral&utm_source=facebook&fbclid=IwAR1_oS_s_z3ah_0UPg8XF62lguYc1STW_2QUBKx23PNwfjcfDP6zjkR521w

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/21/opinion/trump-protests.html

Your opinion please.

[HillGoose]

Maybe bcuz things have never been better and ppl don't want to jeopardize that

[Amenhotep Bakari-Sellers]

As I said In another thread, entertainment with black and Latinos pacify blacks and Latinos.  Take them out of their own problems and go into a pretend world. The media is secular, but its evil too. It puts Celebrities on pedestals and show black and Latinos in the ghettos shooting one another, it's a cycle

[PSOL]

Because things haven’t truly passed the tipping point yet. The US is wealthy enough to take in so much stress to not break, and once that passes you’ll see similar situations in LatAm and Hong Kong develop over here.

[Angel of Death]

Good ol' temporarily embarrassed millionaire syndrome.

[Hermit For Peace]

We are too fat and lazy to do it.

[rhg2052]

Americans are generally well off enough to have a lot to lose, but are constantly at extreme risk of losing it. Most people don't have very much in the way of savings, or are living paycheck to paycheck, with health insurance being either very expensive or tied directly to their employment. So obviously things need to change, but if a lot of people were to walk out of their jobs and take to the streets in a full on revolt, they suddenly lose their jobs, lose their insurance, run the risk of being arrested or injured which will impair their ability to regain their former privileges, so they don't do this.

It is also a geographic problem. In most countries where we see people rising up, it tends to be in geographically smaller countries where most of the population is in or around a centrally located capital city or a few major cities, where travel is quick. But in the US, the population is extremely spread out and car-centric. So unless you live in the DC or NYC metro areas along public transit, what are you going to do? If you live in another major urban area, you can join an uprising there, but you're probably not going to be threatening a major power center. But if you live in most of the country, which is made up of smaller, car-centric cities, car-centric suburbs, or rural areas, what's the plan? You can drive your car hours or even days to get to DC or NYC and pay for parking in the city, and then what? Unless you know people that you can stay with, are you just sleeping in the protest camp? And people that do have the means to just drop everything including work, travel long distances, and join the revolution without worrying about food or rent are not generally the type to want to start a revolution.

[Indy Texas]

Look at the unemployment rate for people under 35 in many of those countries and compare it to ours.

[Santander]

Bread and circuses

[DrScholl]

Because it seems like Americans who do pay attention to politics have a higher tolerance for poor behavior in government and because many people just don't pay any attention at all.

[Libertas Vel Mors]

Look at the unemployment rate for people under 35 in many of those countries and compare it to ours.

This. EU unemployment rate - 6.3%. US unemployment rate - 3.6%.

[Progressive Pessimist]

It sort of happened already in 2011 with Occupy Wall Street.

But really America has never had a tendency to organize and protest as much as the rest of the world does, whether it's out of laziness or resigned despair, it's another exceptional (for bad reasons) part of our country and its culture.

[Fuzzy Bear]

This is a dumb question.

I'm going to explain why. We're not the rest of the world. Our standard of living has tripled since 1960. A lot of people (mostly liberals and angry right wing populists) like to bemoan that the sky is falling. But it's not. The United States remains the most prosperous nation in the world by GDP and stability.

Meanwhile, we're in year 10 of an economic expansion. We have our own populist issues but if you hadn't noticed, our populists are not exactly in the same unchecked position as say, Austria's and Poland's government.

We are, indeed, not like the rest of the World.  Most of the time, I thank God for that fact.

[GP270watch]

 There have been anger based movements but they've been neutralized or co-opted.

 The "Tea Party" was hijacked by Koch brothers and mainstream Republicans as a backlash to Obama, shifting blame from Republican's own policies that created the mess and real source for the anger.

 Occupy Wallstreet was shut down by politicians everywhere after being ridiculed as leaderless and ineffectual, we saw a co-ordinated shutdown of occupy protest sites and it didn't matter if the local politicians were Democrats or Republicans they shut it down.

 BLM was co-opted by Democratic plants and big money. They appointed and funded bad leaders, when the real anger was from the streets. Many of the most prominent Ferguson protesters were killed under very suspicious circumstances.

 America will have great civil unrest in the next few decades and the governemnt might be too weak and divided to stop it.

[Fuzzy Bear]

There have been anger based movements but they've been neutralized or co-opted.

 The "Tea Party" was hijacked by Koch brothers and mainstream Republicans as a backlash to Obama, shifting blame from Republican's own policies that created the mess and anger.

 Occupy Wallstreet was shut down by politicians everywhere after being ridiculed as leaderless and ineffectual we saw a co-ordinated shutdown of occupy protest sites and it didn't matter if the local politicians were Democrats or Republicans they shut it down.

 BLM was co-opted by Democratic plants and big money. They appointed and funded bad leaders, when the real anger was from the streets. Many of the most prominent Ferguson protesters were killed under very suspicious circumstances.

America will have great civil unrest in the next few decades and the governemnt might be too weak and divided to stop it.

Regarding the highlighted portion:  Are you willing to bear policies you do not agree with to forestall this?  Or are you perfectly willing to let this happen so you can be satisfied with seeing your public policy choices enacted?

[Atlas Has Shrugged]

Have you not seen the Woman's March? Or any of the inane anti-Trump protests? This is America. We are not a sh!thole country. We have a 250 year history of democracy and nipping potentially problematic leaders at the ballot box.

My question to people like the OP and GP270watch is this: what are you guys going to do when your revolutionary fantasies somehow become reality. Are you gonna go with a gun to the frontlines to fight in the name of the fascist evil RepubliTHUGs or something?

[OSR stands with Israel]

Look at the unemployment rate for people under 35 in many of those countries and compare it to ours.

This. EU unemployment rate - 6.3%. US unemployment rate - 3.6%.

This

[The Free North]

As others in this thread have said, people like to complain a lot, but over the course of human history, you would be hard pressed to find a more prosperous, peaceful place than 21st century America. This is the same reason why people like Ron Paul, Bernie Sanders, etc don't win elections because no one wants to rock the boat that much. 

Yes we have a gun issue, an inequality issue, etc but if we broaden our perspective a bit, there are quite literally no words to describe how lucky we have it vs most of our ancestors or people in the world today (although thats getting flatter thankfully).

Whats the need for insurrection?

[Beefalow and the Consumer]

Because most people over the age of 35 are now conditioned to believe that a 40 hour per week job that provides a decent living without destroying their physical and mental well-being is a privilege, or something only the best and brightest deserve. They are conditioned to believe that outrageous health premiums and $50,000 medical bills due to circumstances entirely beyond their control is normal and acceptable. They are conditioned to believe that crippling debt is a necessary part of getting the education that might make that mythical 40 hour/wk job with a living wage a reality, but might leave you just as poor as if you just skipped college altogether. And they are conditioned to believe that eight-figure executive salaries and wealth concentration among the 1% is necessary for a "strong economy."

People think everything is fine, or if everything isn't fine, it's not the government's fault.

Also, half the people who by rights should be rising up are convinced that it's immigrants and China who are keeping them down, and their hero is working to save them.

[Person Man]

For every person that was once getting by and now struggling, there is someone else that was once getting by and now getting ahead. That, of course, doesn't invalidate the needs of those who were once getting by but are now struggling. Unfortunately, people who match that description have often caused and exacerbated their plight with their voting habits. 

[OSR stands with Israel]

Source:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)_per_capita

[GP270watch]

Have you not seen the Woman's March? Or any of the inane anti-Trump protests? This is America. We are not a sh!thole country. We have a 250 year history of democracy and nipping potentially problematic leaders at the ballot box.

My question to people like the OP and GP270watch is this: what are you guys going to do when your revolutionary fantasies somehow become reality. Are you gonna go with a gun to the frontlines to fight in the name of the fascist evil RepubliTHUGs or something?

 I don't have revolution fantasies nor do I think the most violent and volatile uprisings will even come from the left. They're much more likely to come from the right.

[Beefalow and the Consumer]

Source:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)_per_capita

This map does not reflect wealth concentration or buying power. Show me a map of the relative disposable income buying power of an individual who falls in the 25th percentile, median, and 75th percentile. That would tell you a lot more about how things are going.

You wouldn't seriously say that things are vastly better for the average citizen of Saudi Arabia compared to the average citizen of Canada, even if the map might indicate that.

[Atlas Has Shrugged]

Have you not seen the Woman's March? Or any of the inane anti-Trump protests? This is America. We are not a sh!thole country. We have a 250 year history of democracy and nipping potentially problematic leaders at the ballot box.

My question to people like the OP and GP270watch is this: what are you guys going to do when your revolutionary fantasies somehow become reality. Are you gonna go with a gun to the frontlines to fight in the name of the fascist evil RepubliTHUGs or something?

 I don't have revolution fantasies nor do I think the most violent and volatile uprisings will even come from the left. They're much more likely to come from the right.

You ought to read up about every revolution in the last hundred years before you make such a flatly false argument. The right in America aren’t putting on black face masks and assaulting elderly women who try to cross the streets they’ve arbitrarily decided to shut down.

[GP270watch]

Have you not seen the Woman's March? Or any of the inane anti-Trump protests? This is America. We are not a sh!thole country. We have a 250 year history of democracy and nipping potentially problematic leaders at the ballot box.

My question to people like the OP and GP270watch is this: what are you guys going to do when your revolutionary fantasies somehow become reality. Are you gonna go with a gun to the frontlines to fight in the name of the fascist evil RepubliTHUGs or something?

 I don't have revolution fantasies nor do I think the most violent and volatile uprisings will even come from the left. They're much more likely to come from the right.

You ought to read up about every revolution in the last hundred years before you make such a flatly false argument. The right in America aren’t putting on black face masks and assaulting elderly women who try to cross the streets they’ve arbitrarily decided to shut down.

 The rightwing in America has been much more violent and anti-government than the left. Just look at the statistics of domestic terror attacks and assaults/standoffs with Federal agencies. Add to the fact that there is a rise in rightwing populism around the globe including the United States. This rise is mostly fueled by scapegoating vulnerable populations, instead of looking at the policy failures the citizens of those very same countries have voted for, over and over again.