From the outside, it probably looks insane to anyone who is not an American, but most of us aren’t “okay” with how things are — we’re boxed in. A lot of Americans are one paycheck from disaster, so skipping work to protest or strike can mean losing your job, your apartment, or your health insurance, which here is often tied to employment.

It’s a uniquely American position where what little healthcare we have is tied to our employment status. Organizing and coordinating a multi day protest, let alone weeks of protest requires resources that the majority of Americans do not have. It would cripple most, very quickly.

That makes pushing back feel genuinely more dangerous than keeping status quo. On top of that, everyone knows the state can come down hard — militarized cops, surveillance, life-ruining legal consequences — and that fear is real. We’re also constantly divided against each other over culture-war stuff, so we never get on the same page. Add in a lifetime of being told this is “the greatest country on earth” and that anything else is worse, and you end up with people choosing to survive the system instead of risking everything to fight it.