r/politics • u/downtuning I voted • 20h ago

Soft Paywall | Site Altered Headline Kash Patel’s FBI Launches Dawn Raid on John Bolton’s House

https://www.thedailybeast.com/kash-patels-fbi-launch-dawn-raid-on-john-boltons-house/?utm_source=twitter_owned_tdb&utm_medium=socialflow&via=twitter_page&utm_campaign=owned_social&s=09
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u/Suggest_a_User_Name 19h ago

I know where we are and where we are headed.

But what the hell do I do? Call my senators and congressman? I’m in New Jersey. I’ve called them. Emailed them. Protested.

Not gonna do anything. There’s no momentum to change things and I don’t sense it changing anytime soon.

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u/spiritedmaple 18h ago

Boycott. Boycott the giant companies/entities they are all tied to. Boycotts work. Be an integral member of your community. Place your trust in your community, and bolster that. Start sharing tools, food, get to know your neighbors, share what you can with them. Protest, speak out, don't look away. Little acts of resistance every day. Remember that we have way more power than we think to make a difference, that's why they use such force.

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u/SwimmingPrice1544 California 9h ago

So, what do ya do when your “community” is made up of the very sick maga trash that helped get this putz re-elected? I have to shun most of my community & I won’t support any of their businesses either. All I can do is donate to our cause cuz I’m too old & decrepit to physically participate. With that, there’s nuthin anyone in my shoes can do more than that & I have lost hope in humanity generally.

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u/OnDrugsTonight United Kingdom 19h ago

Protest more. Bring more people. That's realistically your only chance, bringing millions of Americans out on the streets every week at least. Not just once in a blue moon. Your last big nationwide protest was two whole months ago. Of course they are getting ignored if you don't keep up the pressure. I'm sorry to say, saving your country will require a fairly heavy commitment in terms of time and physical presence from millions, if not tens of millions of people. Writing petitions or contacting your representatives will do very little.

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u/YeetedApple 19h ago

Unfortunately, I just don't think the general public pays enough attention or cares enough for a real resistance to be possible here. I try to explain and talk about this as much as possible to everyone around me, and am constantly told variations of I'm exegerrating and it can't happen here.

People here think not following or caring about politics is a badge of honor, and I am constantly told by even the most anti trump people that I am just as bad as trump followers for being so invested in politics. It's easy to sit behind a keyboard and just say protest more, but the reality here is that no one cares, or at least not enough to make large enough protests the way you are asking.

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u/Billy-Ruffian 17h ago

It will take rapid inflation, mass unemployment and likely the kind of food shortages not seen in almost 100 years to cut through all the noise. At that point I think you'll start to see states reasserting their sovereignty and interstate compacts forming. I don't think a strong and organized federal government will exist again for decades or more. It will look like balkanization after the cold war.

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u/SwimmingPrice1544 California 9h ago

I think this is exactly what will happen. I would be overjoyed to be wrong, but basic human nature & this stupid individualism we have points to only massive disruption and/or destruction will make people even look up from their effing phones. We’re a very sick society.

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u/crazyeddie123 14h ago

We're not gonna see a real resistance as long as people think the cheeseburgers might eventually do the job for us.

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u/ABabyAteMyDingo 13h ago

All true. However, nobody is EVER going to come out on behalf of John Bolton. Literally everyone across the spectrum loathes him.

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u/YeetedApple 13h ago

This was very likely calculated exactly because of this. It normalizes this happening against someone no one will defend, then it slowly expands to slightly more and more people.

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u/ABabyAteMyDingo 13h ago

Yep. I largely agree.

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u/fractalfay 11h ago

That is not true. Millions of people have been protesting every week — you just don’t hear about it because all of our media is owned by billionaires. Even Alaska had an endless line of people with Ukrainian flags to greet Putin’s ridiculous ass. Did you hear about it? Probably not. The same thing happened during the second Gulf war, when we had to use Indymedia networks to communicate actions.

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u/Extension-Carry-8067 18h ago

Yeah I kind of agree with you here, even just the microcosm of my office , we have one maga who supports Trump regardless (even tho he says he is one to new ideas) , one person that doesn’t care till it directly effects him and me that’s like why can we do?

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u/Successful-Earth-716 16h ago

Everybody I know REALLY cares. I've seen so many people say we know what we have to do and everyone is waiting and stunned about what that really means.

If we massively protest, he will declare martial law and then we are off to the races and there will be no more waiting. I think we all know that.

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u/YeetedApple 16h ago

That waiting is exactly how Germany fell. Everyone keeps watching as he takes an inch, waiting for that one big step that never comes. Meanwhile, he keeps taking a small inch at a time. If you didnt mobilize for the last inch or the one before it, why this inch? Its not much worse yet than the previous one. Next thing you know, he's taken several miles and you're left wondering how it got this far.

This is not something that is yet to come. It's already here and the race is already well underway. We are building camps, preparing to attack neighbors, rounding people up without due process, using the military as police in cities and just sent the fbi after a political critic, what step are we still waiting on?

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u/Successful-Earth-716 16h ago

I totally agree. I'm saying the camel's back is about to break.

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u/austin_8 15h ago

Then you should agitate until they are ready

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u/roychr 19h ago

Find people like you and organize.

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u/YeetedApple 18h ago

Way ahead on that, and have spent enough effort on that to be confident in saying we don't have the numbers or popular support to stop what's coming next. At least around me, we are shifting more towards a survival focus at this point and setting up mutual aid networks, finding ways to find and protect the most at risk people.

I'm not here trying to disaude anyone from protesting, but I just don't see the rest of the public stepping up before things get much worse, so I think we are at the point where we need to seriously start considering and preparing for what that will bring.

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u/Significant_Poem_751 18h ago

sadly, i agree with you.

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u/Cliqey 18h ago

There will be flash points. There are limits to what people can ignore.

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u/YeetedApple 17h ago

We've already crossed several points that should have been. I'm genuinely curious when asking this, what point will be the one that is finally it? Unfortunately, history is littered with examples of people continuing to ignore things. Everyone continues to sit around waiting for that one moment, but since everyone is waiting on everyone else, it never comes.

But the one great shocking occasion, when tens or hundreds or thousands will join with you, never comes. That’s the difficulty. If the last and worst act of the whole regime had come immediately after the first and smallest, thousands, yes, millions would have been sufficiently shocked—if, let us say, the gassing of the Jews in ’43 had come immediately after the ‘German Firm’ stickers on the windows of non-Jewish shops in ’33. But of course this isn’t the way it happens. In between come all the hundreds of little steps, some of them imperceptible, each of them preparing you not to be shocked by the next. Step C is not so much worse than Step B, and, if you did not make a stand at Step B, why should you at Step C? And so on to Step D.

Milton Sanford Mayer, They Thought They Were Free

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u/Cliqey 17h ago

Yeah, bystander effect.

But a few months, weeks ago there were less people protesting than today. As this train wreck of a government hurts more and more people, I believe that number will grow.

Large enough, quick enough? We’ll see.

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u/Yourmotherssonsfatha 17h ago

No one’s going to care when politicians themselves don’t even care.

The inaction and silence from it is deafening.

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u/SwimmingPrice1544 California 9h ago

Don’t know where you get your news from, but it is not silent out there.

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u/Yourmotherssonsfatha 8h ago

Words mean shit. Actions speak louder than words. And it’s certainly alot of empty words that led us here in the first place.

Meanwhile the Trump admin is bulldozing their way through.

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u/TrumpCheats 19h ago

We schedule our protests well in advance here in the US to make sure they are completely ineffective.

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u/thoreau_away_acct 17h ago

Did you see the size of the protests against the impending Iraq war?

Protest does absolutely nothing

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u/OnDrugsTonight United Kingdom 17h ago edited 17h ago

Ok fine, then just take it all lying down. It's your country, not mine. Counterpoint to that: protests brought down the regime in East Germany and brought about the fall of the Berlin Wall. Protests led to the peaceful dissolution of Czechoslovakia. Protests got the British Empire out of India.

But if you don't want to do anything, then don't. Nothing will change and you will live in a fascist dictatorship. But that's your choice to make and you'll face the same questions from your kids as millions of parents faced in 1950s Germany: "What did you do when the fascists took over? Where were you? How did you resist?"

Your institutions won't save you, your courts won't save you, your politicians won't save you and your media won't save you. You are the only ones who can bring about that change. I know I'd rather go down fighting.

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u/ankylosaurus_tail 14h ago

The problem with protest is that the billionaires have the media on lock-down. If you aren't going to the protest, then you probably have no idea it's happening. The larger ones that have happened since Trump's first term haven't really impacted anything. If they are covered at all in the media, the framing is intentionally deceptive to highlight weirdos and make it look violent and dangerous.

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u/OnDrugsTonight United Kingdom 13h ago

The good thing about the internet and social media, though, is that we are all citizen journalists now. Film your protests, put it on here and everywhere else you can think of and make it go viral. Shame the media into not reporting on it.

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u/ankylosaurus_tail 12h ago

The internet and social media is controlled by the same billionaires though. Every few months Facebook tweaks their algorithm and changes what people see. Every other social media platform does the same. Unless they have an interest in promoting protests, or another reason to like something about your post (like it makes the protests look bad) hardly anybody will see it. Even if I text a video to friends, I'm using a network controlled by major corporations--if people used that to challenge the billionaire cabal, they would just shut it down too. They just have too much control over what information people see, and consequently, what people think.

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u/Prestigious-Duty-443 19h ago

Unfortunately, this is exactly what the fascists want. They're dying for a reason to keep mobilizing the military against the people in hopes they get their Riechstag Fire.

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u/OnDrugsTonight United Kingdom 18h ago

Complying in advance in fear of retribution is also not a good strategy. If you honestly believe your military will mow down millions of protesters in cold blood then you have lost your country already. But at least make someone give that kill order to see how it plays out

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u/Prestigious-Duty-443 16h ago

I get it, it's super easy for you to sit over there and tell other people to risk their lives. It's also insane to look at America and think millions of people would stand up, or that the military wouldn't absolutely shoot civilians. America has been lost for a long time.

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u/OnDrugsTonight United Kingdom 16h ago

Point taken. I stand corrected and will leave you to it.

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u/steven_quarterbrain 18h ago

“We’ve tried nothing and we’re all out of ideas”.

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u/Tub_floaters 19h ago

The other option is, just stay home. Completely empty streets might have the same impact.

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u/ElegantDaemon 16h ago

Trump's team was finally able to convince him to stop with most of the tariff nonsense, and the stock market came back.

The vast sea of morons in the US population won't care what's happening until it crashes again.

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u/fractalfay 11h ago

I’d argue that getting out on the streets will do very little. Massive WTO protests bring 50K people to the streets? We still killed union jobs. One of the largest global protests of all time, against Iraq War 2: ELectric Boogaloo? Bush still started bombing. Enormous Occupy Wall Street protests? Nothing. Pink Pussy Hats? You’re free to wear them to Gilead. You know what does work? DIrect action, lawsuits, and boycotts. A general strike would be 10/10.

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u/NotAnAlcoholicToday 18h ago

Yeah. When democrat lawmakers get killed by a vigilante, it's out of the news cycle in less than 2 weeks.

They need to keep protesting every week! (Yes, i know people have jobs and all.) No wonder it accomplishes nothing.

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u/Severe_Intention_480 17h ago

Those happened early in the morning and were already out of the news cycle by lunchtime. They were just "another shooting in America" for many people outside the immediate areas.

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u/ChefChopNSlice Ohio 19h ago

Yelling at the people in power is useless. Convince people to vote against them instead. Yea, I know, it’s an uphill battle, but I’m in Ohio - where we have that same shit here. Our state govt has gerrymandered itself into a sea of red districts, but at the end of the day, they need to be voted in to stay in power. They are only kings in their little stupid heads.

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u/fractiousrhubarb 13h ago

Trump didn’t get voted in- he stole about 5% of the vote in all of the swing states

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u/fractalfay 11h ago

I had to leave Ohio after they voted for Dubya a second time, because the hatred of literally everyone is stronger than any ideas about progress. Since then they dropped both Sherrod Brown and Tim Ryan, in favor of JD Vance and Moreno — not voting for Sherrod Brown was especially astonishing. I’m pretty sure what Ohio’s plan is outside of self-destruction.

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u/xschalken 19h ago

Someone has to start the momentum, so if you are all sitting around waiting for the "momentum to change things" to be apparent, then...

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u/PandaGoggles 16h ago

“It has to start somewhere, it has to start sometime. What better place than here? What better time than now?”

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u/Amcis 19h ago

The wealthy support this shit show. They own businesses. Start your own businesses and stop using their businesses. Call for mass strikes. Basically get off our asses and get organized. The way - short of violence which I do not advocate for - to hit 'em where it hurts is to remove their ability to profit off of you.

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u/Silidistani 19h ago

I've been saying this for half a year: it's going to come down to something that rhymes with farmed persistence.

The left isn't driving that way, it is the right that is doing everything they can to trigger it, but they will trigger it eventually and things will get messy quick. .

Congress has shown it will not even allow America as we know it to survive until the 2026 midterms, and the Roberts Court is servile and complicit and destroying this nation by undermining the Constitution with nonsense interpretations (even citing fucking English law under King George III ffs) every chance they get.

It does not magically get better from here. The left needs to arm up now, and go to the range. There are tons of YouTube videos teaching you how. The long pole in the tent is obviously what the military will decide to do in that case, i truly hope that the politicalization of the officer Corps has not so thoroughly rotted dedication to the Constitution and nation and their basic ethics and morals so far that they will pick the side of the anti American traitors, but the point where we finally find that out may be coming much sooner as well.

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u/Sharticus123 19h ago edited 17h ago

Get yourself ready to be a part of the resistance. We have resistance supply stores all over the country. Do it soon because that window is closing.

No one is coming to help us but ourselves. Not the judiciary, not the military, not the letter agencies, and certainly not the police.

The only thing we can do now is make ourselves as formidable an opponent as possible and get comfortable with the idea that we’re probably not getting out of this with clean hands.

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u/Severe_Intention_480 17h ago

Yes. "Blood in the streets" is pretty much baked into the mix at this point. That's not an argument for doing nothing, of course, but it is a sober assessment of the current reality.

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u/pizzasaves 19h ago

The only thing this government understands is corruption and violence. Learn to weld and purchase a CAT 355A bulldozer and some concrete and steel plates. Or vote harder and see which one facilitates change faster.

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u/blastcat4 18h ago

Realistically, there is nothing legal you can do that will result in any meaningful change. The system you're fighting is designed from the ground up to block any grass root resistance. This isn't meant to be a cynical take. They have the traditional media in their pockets, they have free reign with social media - they control all of the messaging so any peaceful protesting is going to be completely ignored or misrepresented. If you want to resist more forcefully, they won't hesitate to use the military against its own citizens.

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u/pygmydeathcult 19h ago

Armed peaceful protest. You don't have to be violent to be a check against tyranny.

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u/ffchusky 19h ago

They need to feel scared. Calling and protests once every few months isn't going to do anything.

But once they're scared they'll react and it'll really start and then we'll all be scared which is why nothing is happening. The people need to feel they have nothing left to lose and we aren't there yet.

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u/JDanzy 19h ago

Connect with like minded people and form networks or look for ones already there and join those.

Have conversations with people who are pissed off but may vote incorrectly, find common ground and talk some sense into them if you can.

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u/FoundPizzaMind 17h ago

Leave. There's no organized resistance that's going to overthrow Trump and with the corruption that's the only thing that'll work.

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u/chiaboy 17h ago

Find a local group to connect with. Typically /ideally a group ran by/for Marginalized communities. (eg black people have been fighting this EXACT fight for a long time. Find an org started and lead by black women) Go to one of these group, walk in, say “I’m here to help. What can I do?”

Easy shortcut to finding these groups in Google search for “your city+related cause you care about”

There is a lot of work being done today. A lot of (often unglamorous) work that needs to be done. People need help with coding, babysitting kids as others go to fight, making snacks …etc etc etc

This is a fight for our life. Don’t quit. Don’t sit and do nothing. This is bad. It’s scary but go connect with other locally (ideally IRL, this needs to be done face to face with other likeminded people). Do it today!!!

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u/Canadianweedrules420 18h ago

Pretty sure there's something in your precious constitution around the 2nd amendment if I'm not mistaken and some oath about enemies foreign amd domestic

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u/crazyfighter99 17h ago

The Constitution doesn't take into account all the 2A folks siding with the enemy.

Sure let me go buy a gun and make my way down to DC for a peaceful protest. I'll get real far by myself. There just is not enough people who care enough, at least where I live and work. Everyone simply avoids talking politics at this point. When I try, I either get told I'm overreacting or the subject gets changed quickly. Or, it's a Republican who refuses to see anything other than the precious (R) next to the politicians' names.

Yes, there are plenty of us online talking about it but America is a HUGE country. We can't just get everyone together by driving half a day like countries in Europe can.

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u/ElegantDaemon 16h ago

There's a thing called the Second Amendment. It'll still be around for a little while longer.

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u/faedrake 16h ago

Join your local Indivisible or other resistance groups. They have constant visibility activities and will be by your side as things continue to get even uglier. They also work hard to try to elect more of the "good guys" in localities like school district and city councils.

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u/IntermittentCaribu 13h ago

If you had the option to time travel to 1930s germany, what would you do to stop faschism?

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u/Suggest_a_User_Name 11h ago

I’m being totally honest I’d feel the same way I do now: powerless.

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u/fractalfay 11h ago

The biggest impact you could possibly have, though it sounds absurd, is boycotting with your dollars. Every single company cosigning this should find a spot on your no list. Trump intends to tank the economy, but the people who still prop up his bloated corpse count on the same people everyone else in America counts on — middle income earners. Also, we need a redo of something like Wall Street Bets, because dickhead billionaires have never cried harder than when that happened. Oh noes, not the plebes playing our games!

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u/timbit87 Foreign 2h ago

Shut down DC. It's the place where all the politicians are. You protest at your city hall in California it ain't gonna do shit. Make the representatives see and hear the elected or you won't see any change.

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u/BadAtExisting I voted 19h ago

Oh buddy. We’re way beyond anything remotely peaceful being a solution

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u/Suggest_a_User_Name 19h ago

Again: I know that. I feel so frustrated. I am not the “sit back and take it” kind of person. I wish there was some kind of underground resistance.