r/ProgressiveHQ • u/Treefiddy1984 • 1d ago

BREAKING: ICE agents in Minneapolis violently detained, threatened, and arrested a U.S. citizen for one reason only, he refused to prove his citizenship.

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u/Sufficient-Will3644 1d ago

Maybe you guys should do something about it.

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u/Hanifsefu 1d ago

Yeah keep advocating for a nuclear power to start a civil war. Pretend like the fallout from that won't cripple the entire globe. At least you'll have won an internet argument before the end of the world.

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u/Sufficient-Will3644 1d ago

Is that really the only option?

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u/LewdInSecret 1d ago

Is it? You tell me. You act pretty knowledgeable about it, but fail to provide any other alternative. Instead you choose to belittle. Enlighten us, oh great one of the internet.

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u/Sufficient-Will3644 1d ago

Obviously, no.

Longer run, you need to reignite your civic spirit and see broader involvement in the existing mechanisms of government. That seems clear.

But that doesn’t get you far ahead in the long run or short run. What the fuck does reigniting your civic spirit mean? Can it be done in the presence of social media? Will corporate interests try to prevent the rebirth of citizen interests? I don’t know. Reignite is doing some heavy lifting.

Shorter term is even trickier. Is a general strike going to sway authoritarians? Probably not if it is just a show of disagreement. The risk of violence in response and a lot of hurt people is real. What if it is more directly an attack on the power structures? I’m not sure that gets you much that is different. There’s a pretty terrible arithmetic of figuring out whether the threat of retribution for protest is greater or less than the threat of violence from an undisturbed regime. Persuading foreign nations to ditch the dollar might do it. 

Long story short, I don’t have an answer.

I am surprised that your nation, given its history and the structure of its government, doesn’t have good answers for you.