Flag flown upside down as sign of distress outside of US State Department building today

I mean, to be fair, the red team thinks it's pretty much only for killing children too...

This is exactly why I've always maintained that the 2nd amendment against tyranny is complete and utter horseshit. There will never, ever, be a case in which civilians can take up arms against the US government and have any remote shot of doing anything. Any tyrannical government will get to where they are with such significant support they will be so ridiculously protected you'd have to take on the entire military and legal branches of the USA.

In 1814 when everyone had a flintlock pistol? Sure. Now? Have fun getting remote drone striked before you even step foot into Washington D.C.

I believe in the 2nd Amendment, but certainly NOT to overthrow the government for light and transient causes. I don’t take Trump lightly, but he hasn’t turned into a total despot yet. There is grave risk, but there’s also a chance his abuses will lead to reforms that limit Executive branch powers. I think many non-Republicans like our guns as much as Republicans, but we don’t bluster about them and unlike Republicans we don’t rebel because our candidate lost an election.

Now why would the elected officials do something to their own detriment? You want them to act like representatives or how they've been acting?

[cries in RFC 2119]

Every suppressed vote is as fraudulent as any fake vote.

I hear you. Americans in general aren't our (Canada's) enemy, but your President is, along with those who voted for him (and to a lesser extent, those who did not vote), and I have much less sympathy for the "leopards ate my face" crowd during Trump's second term than his first, since he made it very well known what kind of charlatan he was.

I hear you, friend. Just remember, they don't live here. They haven't experienced the calculated dismantling of our education system. They haven't seen the meteoric rise of Christian nationalism. They don't know how sick and tired the general population is. Social safety nets are more robust in their countries, so they don't have nearly the same number of racist, angry, lead addled boomers managing to gain a chokehold on every aspect of our daily lives.

But we do live here, we have experienced it, and you are not alone.

Anytime I talk about these things to folks outside the US, it’s always some reply about “your country chose this!” And how, regardless of how I voted, I still somehow let this happen. It’s super frustrating and disheartening.

The way i see it, the current disasters unfolding were predictable as far back as the 1960s. Unhinged greed is a disease, and letting it run free and calling it "progress", "economic liberalism", and channeling it to make it your main way of doing economy, is a disease. What's angering me personally is that it seems to me that Americans are so extremely short-sighted, that as long as it worked for them, everything was ok in their eyes, and now that they're hitting the wall, they suddenly want to get off the vehicle. Good planning takes a long time, and even if we wanted to help you, we couldn't, because there's not enough preparation time.

Now, it is the cool thing to be super anti-American.

This isn't news. Different than what americans might think, they're not necessarily looked at as the "big heroes" everywhere. There's a lot of countries who have made a lot of bad experiences because of them, and really, the USA isn't popular, on average, world-wide.

It can be both. Pissweak corpodems don't inspire enough people for a landslide, and landslides are much harder to rig.

This is the most frustrating thing about this administration: They are showing that you CAN do things. Democrats sit on their asses for four years, and Trump did all this in less than a month. Democrats better get their steel toe fucking boots on and kick these conservatives fucks in the sick.

ANYTHING LESS AND I SAY FUCK YOU

I am fucking sick of trying to do the right thing and GETTING FUCKING NOTHING.

Sorry, got a little pissed there lol

They did it here in Canada to the trucker protestors. While everyone cheered it on, those of us with an eye for the future noted that what can be done to them can be done to us.

The cavalry's not coming. It's just us.

Oh they'll come.

The US will have to go to war to keep down unrest. Whether Trump makes good on Canada / Greenland / Poland, the world will have to form a coalition against us, and it's likely China will take the lead.

There will be Chinese bombers over Washington just as there were Russian and American bombers over Berlin. Not that we'll be around to enjoy it, and those that remain will suffer as collaborators (whether they were or not).

We really don't want to let it get there. But then we really didn't want it to get here, and we knew in the early aughts with George W. Bush's administration this is where we were headed if someone didn't chance course. Obama, who promised to change course, did not.

This is specifically what NATO is designed for, to help when there are 3rd party threats to member nations. We have both made threats to other member nations (Canada, Greenland) and are currently experiencing a coup in our own country, which is a 3rd party threat if I've ever heard one.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/NATO

I am doing everything I can, but as a private citizen my options are extremely limited. What am I supposed to do in response to an international distress signal?

I don't trust anyone enough for something to actually be done. Buy guns, buy 3d Printers, learn to make clothing, prepate your homesteads, prepare for isolation and be ready to lean on and support your neighbors.

Be the best you can be, make good relationships with those around you, and brace yourselves . It's the only thing I can realistically think I alone can do for me, my family, and my community.

Is it a doomer view? I don't think so. I like to have hope that my vote can fix something. I like to think my protests are heard and considered. But at the end of the day I have to focus on doing what I actually can.

I know it probably feels comforting to claim the moral high ground and say "I told you so" but you're just letting your own weakness infect the people on your side. Everyone has moral turning points in all of their lives and it's a futile and stupid gesture to say your entry point is better than someone elses. Let's focus our hatred on the people who deserve it: billionaires.

This take is lazy and offensive to everyone who truly didn’t have a choice. I’ve been in school this entire time because growing up everyone told me I could be whatever I wanted if I worked hard. Now that I’ve done that and I’m almost graduated, I’m looking around at a world that is completely unrecognizable from before and hope for everyone my age is at an all-time low. Please enlighten me, as someone who has only been a member of the civic process for less than half a decade, how the fuck is this my fault?

The decades of inaction should be largely heaped at the feet of Baby Boomers, who have sucked up and hollowed out the vast majority of American prosperity.

Everyone else has been carried along in the wake of their outsized cohort's rampage.

If I lose my job how am I supposed to heat my house, feed myself and my wife, or treat my chronic illness? Employers don't look kindly on job abandonment, especially to go protest the thing businesses stand for...

100%. Even after he leaves office, is anyone confident that the country will collectively go "well that was embarrassing, anyway, back to normality now!"

I don't disagree with you and I would love it if people had to experience the consequences of their poor decisions and learn hard lessons that they've been evading for years. The problem is that millions of innocents are and will be caught in the crosshairs. This is a matter of life or death for many people who did not vote for him and it is unconscionable to allow all those people to die just so a bunch of loud racist hillbillies with lead poisoning can learn a lesson.

Dead on. This is a snowballing shit storm building since Reagan. Probably earlier. Trump is only a foothold, a useful idiot. He's popular with the Boomers and knows how to work them and use the language. They even refer to him as "their boy." Meanwhile he's "making deals" e.g. pumping the dicks of other corpos like Xi and Putin and pretending to get them on board even when he fails with the smarter leaders while his little weasels dismantle shit in the background.

Will they actually see it though is the question, or will they greedily accept the new set of lies as the world burns around them.

I'm not going to argue with you, I get enough of that on reddit. But there is a literal mountain of evidence, including their own statements and sketchy behavior, hard data, unsecured voting machines, various voter suppression tactics, ballots that were tossed, code that was published online months (possibly more than a year) before the election, and one of the twerps currently taking over the treasury wrote code that can falsify ballots while he was an intern for Musk.

Also, it is like Hitler, they're using the same exact playbook, and while there are some key differences there is no arguing that this is the exact reason NATO exists. Justin Trudeau could invoke article 4 for threats of invasion. Someone from our government should still be able to invoke article 5. These international agreements exist because when the highest power in the nation is compromised, we need outside help.

I'm doing everything I can, including starting my own group to organize locally, making God only knows how many calls to state reps, learning how to defend myself, translating for local immigrants with questions about what's happening, attending protests and assisting in those organization efforts, brushing up on my history, learning more about international treaties and alliances, volunteering at a food bank, and some other things that I would be stupid to share.

You know what they say about assumptions.

Maybe President Xi really could save us.

Perhaps we can ask the Taliban for help

You're saying that like it's a bad thing? If that's what needs to happen so that Elon Musk doesn't irreparably damage our country and cause the deaths of millions, then yes. Please. Invade us. We've done it to plenty of other countries, maybe it's our turn.

Also yeah, that's pretty much what NATO does when shit really hits the fan.

Someone: NATO. This is the exact reason they exist. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/NATO

Something: Remove the tyrants by force.

Myself and everyone I know have been doing all of the things you mentioned since November, if not earlier. There have been multiple massive protests. We have been calling our reps demanding recounts, asking why democrats are capitulating to unconstitutional actions, and begging for them to intervene. We have been protesting at every opportunity. We have joined and even started our own organizations trying to get people organized. Why aren't we gaining any traction? Because they already stopped listening to us ages ago. Because all our means of large scale organization (Twitter, Instagram, Facebook) are actively suppressing information. Because every group we start gets brigaded and eventually shut down by internet trolls with nothing to lose. Because people are tired, sick, broke, and traumatized. The other day I watched an ICE raid happen in real time. These people were members of my community, good people, and now they've probably been sent to a concentration camp.

I don't want to hear shit about "tangible steps." What tangible steps can the average citizens of this country take to stop the richest man in the world, and multiple other billionaires, who already have their dirty paws in every single aspect of our government infrastructure? We can't even get in the same room as the guy. He has choked our skies with satellites and has all our personal information.

Please tell me what else we're supposed to do, I'm all ears.

History offers one very good "right" way, imo.

Maybe we should double down on capitalism again.

It's the only move the US has used in living memory.

Maybe we shouldnt vote. Thatll show em

People should get creative. Imagine if they backed up every sewer in DC

I love that you linked this through fucking amazon.

This is the message of the enemy. I am not sure what there is to be done, but to say this:

There’s nothing that can be done.

is to give up. The only thing that we ordinary people can know is that the democratic party is unable/unwilling to form an effective resistance right now.

There is always one type of power the people have.

You could rise up. Isn't that what all the guns are for?

They're still cheering. No other awareness to be had

They're completely caught in the misinfo and still cheering him on. Anyone getting hurt must have deserved it and if they're getting hurt it just shows how important it is to hurt the others back.

Everyone just giving their opinion but the answer is mixed. Some regret, many don't. And it's not just disinformation, people have to deal with their own cognitive dissonance. Just on the radio earlier was an Arab man still defending vote for Trump because "it's just rhetoric" right now. He's willing to say it's terrible rhetoric, but won't come to terms with the vote being a bad decision.

in south park he fucks illegal canadians to death, but in real life he is doing it to americans

The majority did not vote for this. The majority of voters didn't even vote for this. He only won a plurality (<50%)

balls so big they make black holes

For real. Serious props to this person.

The photo is weirdly blurry and grainy so be suspicious.

You mean the filthy window? Yeah, something tells me they get pollution there and don't clean the outside of the windows as often as they should. I've seen that kinda filthy often enough on office windows.

but all the mainstream media is run by libruls.

I'm surprised they haven't pulled it the way they went ban crazy this morning.

Because the image quality is poor

It clearly does have stars. They just blur into the field because the quality isn't high enough. Zoom in and you can see there's slightly whiter dots where the stars should be. You just can't really make them out.

Gondor

No way. Harris getting elected would have been the end of this just like in 2020. That's why we must attack anyone critical of her, apathetic voters, and pretty much everyone else except for the DNC.

You found a way to scream withouy caps--impressive I wish you the best comrade!

Oh sweetie, let me break this down in terms you might understand. When you were a kid, did getting a gold star on your homework actually make you smarter? No? Same thing here.

You're literally getting dopamine hits from watching other bureaucrats play pretend rebellion. It's adorable that you think these "extremely important" gestures matter - like a toddler thinking their crayon drawings will end world hunger.

Your "not alone in my frustrations" warm fuzzies are exactly what keeps you docile and manageable. But I get it - thinking is hard, and feeling is easy. Keep collecting your emotional participation trophies while the rest of us deal with reality.

Want to make actual change? Learn how systems work instead of clapping for performative theatre. But that would require effort, wouldn't it?

Not quite, it's an international sign that a vessel is in distress.

Then mostly right wing lunatics co-opted it to mean that our country is in distress.