So, lets say we get to August or some summer month, and 4,000,000 people are protesting right out front the white house.
Do they send in the tanks? Do they kill 1,000,000 people? Would republican civilians see empathy for the dead americans who were democrats? Or would it unite the nation like 9/11 did, except this time against the government?
Don’t underestimate this administration’s cruelty.
It really depends on when this happens. If it would happen today, there would be bloodshed, but probably not on a Tiananmen level. The longer we wait, the more likely that the number of deaths is higher in such a case. Which makes it that much more important to act now (which, to be fair, is easy for me to say, considering I don’t live in the US).
We did already, when MacArthur razed the Bonus Army. FDR was elected the next election and bought some guillotine insurance in the form of taxes and social programs.
Imagine a scenario where an American government deployed armed soldiers into the center of a city to suppress a civilian revolt against the government.
A thing that has never happened before.
Oh my sweet summer child, the United States has had several tiananmen Square style incidents.
Look up the bonus army, Kent state, battle of Blair mountain…
True but… None were THAT bad. The US has done some heinous shit but usually it’s outside of their borders. Inside their borsers, still heinous shit but not as bad as Tiananmen square
Edit: in “recent history” of course, say, within the last 50 years. Go back further than that and you’ll find much greater atrocities, especially against the natives, but do the same in China and it’ll still resign supreme in their atrocities against civilians
Ffs, the response to the LA Riots in '91 happened two years after Tienamen.
Nevermind the police response to Occupy Wall Street and BLM.
Just to add: Ruby Ridge…
Ruby Ridge was a shootout between a family of paranoid religious whackjobs and the feds after they cocked up handing a guy a warrant, which eventually got taken by what today would be called “Magats” as a rallying cry.
- Bonus army saw 17,000 vets, 26,000 supporters against the US Army and their tanks.
- Kent State was a load of unarmed college kids against The Ohio National Guard.
- Blair Mountain was 10,000 coal minters against The Police, Army, and a Pinkerton Company.
They call make Ruby Ridge look like a bar squabble.
Yeah, no. The religious nutter part is utterly irrelevant.
What IS relevant is that the ATF entrapped the dude; they wanted him as an informant, so they spent a long time cajoling and threatening him into cutting a shotgun down for them (“short barrel shotgun”, a National Firearms Act of '34 violation), and when he did, they immediately fucked his life. He ended up getting arresting him, he bonded out, and then got multiple differing dates for a court hearing. He didn’t trust the courts because he thought the gov’t was out to get him (spoiler: they were), and so skipped court. The judge issued a warrant improperly, and then the US Marshalls showed up, and everything went downhill.
It was a very, very clear case of entrapment, and what the gov’t did was inexcusable. It doesn’t matter that they wanted him to spy on the Aryan Nations, what they did to try and bend him to their will was evil.
Don’t minimize that shit.
The gov’t can, and will, crush every single person that they can get away with crushing.
It’s crazy that you believe that government propaganda from then, but rightfully distrust the government now.
lemmy.ml is over there.
I literally got information from Wikipedia. The wife believed that the end of the world was nigh. Now I will admit, even back then, you didn’t need to believe the end of the world was nigh to not trust the government. But let’s be frank, ruby ridge was not on the same level as the bonus army, or the battle of Blair mountain, or Kent state.
If you think I shoot out between a conspiratorial family who believed at the end of the world was nigh and group of incompetent cops is equivalent to the battle of Blair mountain, then frankly, I think it’s you that’s fallen for the propaganda.
I am not saying it’s worse, I’m saying it was still a collosal government fuck up that resulted in the deaths of an entire family.
Are you trying to tell me that it was ok simply because they believed in a sky daddy???
This is the endgame Moscow wants: Balkanization and destabilization.
All the things that were said the USSR would do, we did unironically.
Friendly reminder that Boris Yeltsin shelled Parliament back in 1993
You guys are gonna blame leftists and/or Putin all the way to prison, aren’t you? What’s happening now is purely American, baby, and non-whites have been subjected to it for hundreds of years.
Sarcasm aside, you really don’t need to look much further than American literacy rates and money in politics to see how we got here. Bonus points if you look into FPTP and gerrymandering. Of course it’s much easier to be intellectually lazy and just say “this is all Putin’s fault. Just wait till the miderms”.
edit: geopolitics- yea, the US did this to itself (but a few people made a lot of money!!).
Capitalism
Honestly though, we did it to them first with the Soviet union. It may have toppled by itself but we were DESPERATELY funding and fomenting the same shit in the Soviet union for decades.
It worked.
Now it’s working here.
If you stand up against this, everyone on every other side tries to tear you down as a traitor to their own cause(s).
There is no winning in the middle anymore.
Is the issue tanks ? Because the National Guard has killed people during Vietnam.
Right?
So many people are ignorant of history. I had someone in another thread screaming at me how this is all because of 2001. As if this stuff didn’t happen before then.
If you have that many people they can just knock them out. This is what should have happened a year ago.
First of all, I don’t think the Anerican military would follow that order. Shooting supposed drug smugglers illegally and shooting your neighbors illegally are two different kettle of fish for us humans who want to belong to sonething.
They would have to turn off the internet including satellites and then destroy all camera capable gadgets, maybe with an EMP. I think this is too much hassle. There won’t be a Tiananmen Sq in the US. The Chinese could control the narrative internally and didn’t give af about the rest of the world - in 1989. As we see in Iran today, the world is but a village and footage travels fast. The risk is too high.
But keep looking at ICE or “proud” militias. I would not be surprised to hear about these bastards sniping at protest leaders or even rando participants to discourage more protests. Look for fat guys on roofs.
You mean like they ‘didn’t’ at Kent State?
Don’t kid yourself; they absolutely will. Going by our history, though, if they can they’ll do it to a black neighborhood first.
You are more supporting my gut feeling here by invoking Kent State. A handful of people died there; hundreds+ died in Beijing.
A situation like Kent State is very possible but they will have learned the lesson and it won’t be NG or other armed forces opening fire. It’ll be the obese SA or a right-wing militia that opens fire from a sniper’s nest.
I don’t think the Anerican military would follow that order.
Of course they wouldn’t. Because Americans are exceptional, unlike those soulless Chinese bugmen.
I concur. They have already done illegal things. There will be some who will.
Blowing up innocent fishermen boats and killing off the survivors.
Stealing oil tankers. Kidnapping a leader of another country.
Oh. Yeah. They would absolutely kill Americans.
There is enough of them.
It won’t be their neighbors though it’ll be troops shipped in from the other side of the country just like in China.
Neighbors, countrymen - choose your own metaphor.
I’m no expert on the people’s army. I don’t think they had any way to refuse an illegal order. The US armed forces do have this. I think there are enough people in the US military that would refuse to shoot on protestors. Supposed drug smugglers are the out group and scruples are sadly low enough not to refuse that illegal order. Sending in the tanks in Minneapolis or Boston to shoot on their in group would be crossing the line. Not a good, sterdy, moral line but a line nonetheless.
I don’t think they had any way to refuse an illegal order.
They could literally just not carry out the order, that’s why the CCP brought in out of town troops. I don’t know the structure of ICE but it seems they are doing the same, troops from Texas and Arizona are more likely to shoot Minisottans than Minisottan troops, and I suspect they would do the same if they deployed the military.
Let’s hope then that I’m right and even out of towners of the armed forces will not want to shoot.
They can’t risk it. Too many people could record it so they couldn’t control the narrative.
Based on the reaction to all of this, it’s kinda clear they do not give a shit. So we’ll see how the all plays out.
Too many people recorded the murders of Renee Good and Alex Pretti for them to control the narrative, but all that happened was that one guy got demoted.
It is building political pressure against them, they’re very clearly uncomfy within the administration. It may not directly fix all our fucked up shit but the admin blinked for the first time this cycle when it was looking increasingly likely that they had no limit and we were headed straight for a police state.
We survived last time by keeping them consistently on the defensive and for the first time we’ve managed to control the narrative again
They’ve done it before. They’ll do it again.
Hard disagree. Their base will believe anything.
If we set up gas chambers in Florida some people would be insisting they were harmless showers while they were being forced into them.
Haven’t been paying attention, have you?
Do you think they care? Dude they’re shooting unarmed women in the face in broad daylight in front of thousands of witnesses and on video.
And just imagine, the heartless coward that did it isn’t facing charges and gets to lie down in his own bed every night and walk up the next day.
Yep
No consequences so far
Civil wars have started over less than this
Civil wars require 2 sides capable of taking power.
IIRC they moved Ross out of state. So yes, he’s not in jail but he’s not exactly lounging at home either.
Yes. Yes they would. Only it would be different as they’d need to have thousands of babies and kittens to fill up the empty spaces before they crushed them to death, as trump’s pathetic little ego can’t fathom being compared to someone- he has to beat them.
So yeah… What deplorable acts China did would be dwarfed by this fascist if given the chance. And I guarantee you that he wants that chance.
The United States? No.
The American Nazi Party? Without a doubt.
There is no more United States. They would have to be United for that name to still apply. Now there is only the Disunited, Distracted States of America and the rapidly growing Fourth Reich taking their territory from within.
We’re rounding people up into interment camps. We’re way past tank man.
…ok, but you do realize what hspprned the 2 days prior to tank man, right?
Short of sending an M1 Abrams, they’ve thrown everything at us along with the kitchen sink.
We’re way past Tank Man. Also, they already sent in the tanks. The police have riot vehicles which are typically repurposed military tanks.
I don’t think you understand how bad it is in the US right now.
There has never been anything like this in this country since WWII and even then the Japanese labor camps were leaps better than alligator alcatraz.
Dude… Just no. They have not thrown the kitchen sink at us. Tear gas, unconstitutional arrests, even shooting people in isolated incidents is not even fucking close to how bad it could get. Short of sending an M1 Abrams? How about just unloading full auto rifles into a crowd? How about taking out targets with predator drones? FFS, they only just started deploying LRAD.
Things can, and very well may, get so, so, SO much worse even before tanks start rolling in the streets.
This isn’t Iran.
If they could have done all that by now they would have.
It would be fairly difficult to convince any military branch or even police force to open fire on its own protesting citizens. There is a reason why we have three branches of government and Congress and a Senate.
That’s not to say I’m not downplaying it. It’s still really bad out there.
Ice is the new age Gestapo.
Don’t confuse United States with Trump. Trump would risk it
Trump wanted to literally bomb protestors last term. There is some report on a call where he wanted to do it. Just drop a missile on them.
Like it or not, the distinction is meaningless to people outside of the US
People have been calling U.S Americans dumb cunts for decades, Trump is the embodiment of the U.S.A as viewed by outsiders.
No one hates the USA more than US Americans, but we also unite against foreign hostility, it’s like an exclusive club for self haters. So I’m sure the world views us in much the same way. Just from looking around and seeing the Trump flags coming down, it appears a significant portion of his past supporters are realizing that they made a mistake or are at least a little hesitant to proudly display their support.
I would say Trump has a hammer and every problem is a nail, but he’s not sure what a nail is or how to use a hammer so he just goes around hitting things with the wrong side of the hammer. So now everyone else thinks they all of the USA doesn’t know how to use hammers.
No one hates the USA more than US Americans
I promise you, the people who you bomb, murder, and torture by the millions hate you more.
Kent State says yes
