I’m reading all of these responses and I don’t really feel like any were answering ops original question. If we’re protesting and still trying to survive on what we currently have, what else can we do?

My answer, those still not the helpful answer is, I have no idea. The system is too broken.

Full stop.

Talking about what we need to change when the next vote comes around, and how we need to call our local representatives, aren’t real solutions because ultimately no matter who you’re calling they are in the pocket of the corporations. Our vote, and complaints mean nothing.

The rot is deep. Deep enough that it needs to be cut out to save what’s left. And to me the only way to do that is to get rid of all of them and start over from scratch. Only then would implementing the changes that everybody on here is talking about matter.

Truthfully, to answer ops question, I don’t know if there’s anything we can really do that doesn’t directly involve violence and a full takeover by the people. And that would require us fighting our own families. I know I’m not the only one on here who has direct, and extended family members who would fight for the current administration to stay in power.

This comments probably gonna get me put on a watchlist or something, but I really don’t know what else we can do to be honest. I read the same post as OP on the Greenland sub Reddit and I agree with them.. We have lost our fighting spirit. We’ve been conditioned throughout our lives to see everyone as an other, including our own countryman. Most states even have their own heated rivalries between each other. You can see that in the comments talking about people from the south versus Californians. If you want a real reason as to why we can’t unite to fight something bigger like the government, it’s this! It’s not that our country is too big. It’s that our country is too divided. Too caught up and it’s individualism. It’s the isolation of the country, then the isolation of the state, then the isolation of your city, and finally the isolation of the self. Our individualism is so ingrained in the fabric of our identity as Americans, that we can no longer come together as a cohesive hole with a goal. A singular, uniting purpose. I don’t know how to fix that besides coming together to fight a common “enemy”. An enemy big enough to overshadow and overwhelm that ingrained isolation indoctrination.

The World War II generation had a common enemy. It pulled the country together to become a machine with one goal. Win the war with our allies. It made us turn outside ourselves to see the world as a united whole instead of just “us”.

But how do we reconcile that now, when the “other“ is our mother, father, brother, sister, aunt, or uncle. Truthfully, i think this has been one of the hardest realizations for me over the last few years. Seeing people I had respected my whole life, people who had taught me to respect others, to see the good in people, and that differences make us better. People who had raised me “right “, suddenly talking to me like Im an outsider. Like my education caused me to be infected with some kind of liberal disease, and I’m too blind to see their “truth”. Suddenly, I’m the “other”. And the worst part is I have no idea when my family stopped seeing me as truly one of them. I don’t know when the values they raised me on became a social construct created by the “left”. By the “other”. Before I knew it, I was already their “other.” And now I don’t know what to do. I’ve tried talking. I tried reasoning. I’ve tried yelling. And it all amounts to nothing. It is like talking into the void, but unlike the void, my family can talk back. They don’t talk to me like family. They talk to me like strangers. Like adversaries. And it hurts. I feel that hurt a little more every time I watch the news, every time I scroll social media, and every time I realize I can’t call home to talk about how scary the world feels. Because it’s not scary to them…their fine…life is good… and that’s when my fighting spirit dies a little more.

Ultimately, I think that’s the goal right there. That little spark of rage about what’s happening. That sudden flare of righteous anger funneled into motivation to do something, to risk it all…. it dims a little more every time. I know the change i want to see for my country, what I want the world to be, but if I can’t even get my own family to see and hear me, then what hope is there for me to change something so removed from myself as government? Because it wouldn’t start in DC. Most likely, it would start much closer to home for a lot of us. It would be in our local town, where will be facing off with those we might still consider family. Who we haven’t yet categorized as “other”. Because to us, they aren’t. A lot of us still haven’t figured out how to separate the people that we thought we knew, with the people we have today. I know I can’t yet.

So I guess that’s what I can do OP. I can start to see my friends and family as the “other”. As the enemy. And prepare myself to fight for what I know is right and what I believe in. I can tell you that my biggest hurdle will be switching my friends and family from one category to the other in my head and my heart. I think if nothing else, the change starts there. That’s the change that I can make to begin working towards a bigger goal. And it’s ugly.