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Have Americans always been this stupid?
(lemmy.world)
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this post was submitted on 25 Mar 2025
654 points (92.2% liked)
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Somehow related, I have also questions as an European (Belgian) who then observe what is happening right now in the USA with curiosity (and fear to be honest). Please don't take any offense in this question, the purpose is, for me, to understand, not criticize Americans at all. I work with plenty of them who don't look stupid at all (but I'll never dare to speak politics with colleagues, a bit of a "touchy" topic with people you don't know well).
In my country, we have got a new government almost at the same time Trump was inaugurated. They plan to do some changes to the way some aspects of our society is, changes that are a bit difficult for some categories of the population but really nothing like in the USA. Anyway, since January, there have been strikes, protests, people going in the streets,...
Why are we not seeing such things in the USA? I would have thought that there will be millions of people in the streets protesting against the F-gesture done to democracy, LGBT rights, women rights, nonsense with economy (tarriff, that at the end the "middle class workers" will have to pay) and foreign politics but, as far as we are aware here in Europe, I seen no such protests. The only action I seen is some boycott of Tesla.
Yes, the American culture of rugged individualism instead of collectivism is certainly a factor here. It's not like it's entirely unheard of here in the USA to have large protests (look at what happened with the killing of George Floyd) but for systemic issues, it doesn't generally get people in the streets, I think at least partly because there's so many we've put up with for so long.
There's also American Exceptionalism making us less introspective and self-critical of our systems of governance and economics compared to the rest of the world, and so people tend to just accept it as "well it's the best there is" without considering how it could be better. There's also the economics of it where we have less or no time off from work to get out for such events.
There are protests happening but there does seem to be, putting it charitably, a lack of interest to report on such things, and the protests that are happening don't seem to be happening at a large enough scale to make a difference.
My mom frequently expresses surprise that more isn't being done to suppress the protests that are happening, I think it's because they're not afraid of the protests escalating into larger action, and so actively suppressing them would actually do more to raise the profile of the protests that are happening and fuel the flames, whereas you just get the media not to report on it that much and let it die out on its own.
Yes, I imagine plenty are, especially those who may be targeted by ICE or have friends/family who may be targeted by ICE.
To an extent, yes. I don't know if I'd say that the majority are happy with the things happening, but a majority are probably okay with it, or just going along in ignorance (willful or otherwise), or too busy or tired just trying to survive rather than make things better. There are many people who don't care until they are directly and severely impacted with the consequences of their choices, and even that isn't enough to change some people's minds.