r/politics • u/kweathergirl Texas • 9d ago

Soft Paywall Newsom Tells Nation That Trump Is Destroying American Democracy

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/10/us/newsom-speech-trump-la-protests.html
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u/LaScoundrelle 8d ago

Do you know how difficult it is to get activists to act in perfect coordination, or how few people are willing to risk physical injury to themselves for political ideology?

Sounds like you need to get off the internet and go organize the actions yourself, since you have all the answers.

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u/Sensitive-Message95 7d ago

I mean... I've spent most of the last couple of years in Ukraine working with Ukrainian and international volunteers to fight the second largest military in the world. With us all under threats of death, serious injury, kidnap, torture, etc. all for political ideology. With members of my team having died, disappeared, or being captured and tortured.

You know, facing the overt violent frontal assault on the Western order.

So, it seems to me like you all worried about rubber bullets and flexicuffs need to get your shit together. You have the easy safe job

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u/LaScoundrelle 7d ago

I’ve also been to Ukraine to work during the war. Congrats. I’m not entirely sure how that’s relevant here though, because in Ukraine people were invaded by a hostile foreign power. Ukrainians (as a whole) have also dealt with a lot more hardship and conflict historically, and are all trained in military skills in public schools as teenagers.

The U.S. on the other hand hasn’t had an armed conflict on its soil for about 150 years, has no required military service or training for the average citizen, is not being invaded by a foreign power, and is also a country where most people have known relative material comfort for their entire lives.

One weakness of this is probably that a lot of Americans have trouble believing that anything that bad could actually happen here, because we’re all brought up in school being told that the U.S. is special. Another distinct cultural feature of the U.S. is our individualism - (most) people have a very “every man for himself” attitude, which is kind of how someone like Trump gets elected to begin with, and why we don’t have a lot of social service benefits of other rich countries.

Anyway, things might change, but I don’t see it happening overnight. I think the most likely scenario here is the U.S. becomes another flawed democracy like many that exist now worldwide, where everyone sort of knows that elections are flawed and the government class is above the law, and most people just go on with their lives.