Does something tragic have to happen before people pay attention?

[kentuck]

Laws are being broken, coming and going, by this Administration. It is not just a difference in policies. It is the laws of this country.

When masked men, with guns, are able to arrest anyone, without a warrant, it is not legal. It is lawlessness.

When our elected officials are denied oversight, it is illegal. It is part of their constitutional responsibilities.

When lawlessness is permitted to run wild, anonymously, it is just a matter of time until someone innocent is killed. Will they simply say it was "collateral damage"?

It doesn't matter if he is doing just what he said he was going to do. It doesn't matter if half the country voted for it. They do not have the right to vote against the constitutional rights of the other half. It was illegal from the beginning.

This lawlessness must cease.

[Vogon_Glory]

1. Yes, I'm afraid that it will require tragic deathss

I hate saying this: I’m not really a proper progressive, let alone a diaper Democrat : I’m a onetime moderate Republican who decided that the Republican Party left me back in the 1980’s.

But it needs to be said: it WILL take massive public outrage for citizens to act and dead American citizens sprawled on the street for senior editors and ratings-focused corporate media executives to decide to pay attention to what’s going on.

[Ocelot II]

2. Unfortunately, yes.

It gets people's attention, especially if it occurs nearby or involves someone they knew. Sometimes it takes a tragedy or disaster close to home to make people pay attention; they don't think it could happen to them until it does.

[Prairie_Seagull]

3. It is sure looking that way.

I still think that minds can be changed with enough input from our leaders. However it also seems that few leaders want that challenge.

[liberal N proud]

4. I fear that even that will not snap MAGA from their spell

They worked a very long time indoctrinating the cult, long before the tangerine fascist was on the scene.
The HATE that MAGA has developed is not simply a racist issue, but they truly hate liberals.

And that hate will keep them entrenched in their cult and continue to support the monster.

[Native]

26. I agree. All I have to do is think back to all the crap about the school shootings being fake Etc

Every tragic incident that ensues will be spun as something entirely different

[crim son]

5. Maybe.

But look at mass shootings in the US. It is fair to say that we have had many, many gun-related tragedies over the past few decades, but nothing whatsoever has been done about it. Covid came and killed millions, and people are still claiming it didn't. I have lost faith in the American public. At least forty percent are straight up morons.

[vapor2]

10. Agreed

And even school shootings have not changed actions by Congress and even now assault weapons are allowed. I don't know where the red line will be

[Tetrachloride]

6. I see a lot of people looking at their coffee or laptops.

Paying attention ? If its snowing, they might look.

[walkingman]

7. Corruption is so common these days that most people pay no attention at all.

The same with gun violence. We have been desensitized to such an extent that we elected a convicted felon who calls people names and makes fun of the disabled and veterans that lost their lives.

America has become a bad reality show.

[milestogo]

8. Last weekend elected officials were assassinated.

By a MAGAT.

Lots of people paid no attention.

[kentuck]

9. True.

How much more tragic does it have to be ??

[Kaleva]

12. Only you know when enough is enough

No one else knows where the line in the sand is that you drew.

[FirstLight]

16. this...and 5 days later it's gone from socials etc...

Unfortunately, we're gonna be far past the point of no return by the time the general public wakes up...

I'm currently trying to figure out if I should be hedging my bets and prepping for something awful

[haele]

11. It may have already happened.

Under the auspices of ICE and this mis-administration drug addled ghouls, who knows how many brown teens, pretty women (and men) have been kidnapped for torture, rape, or killing by the ICE deputized immigrant-catchers; the untrained, unqualified ammosexual "he-men", incels, and sanctimonious nutjobs who get off on other people's pain and despair.

I'm waiting for the mini-prisons and slave compounds hidden away in remote, newly sold off National Forest areas, where people are unwillingly forced to working resource extraction, agriculture, or small manufacturing in unsafe conditions.

I'm waiting for the unmarked graves.

I hope I'm wrong, but I know history. And I know what resentful, angry cult members are capable of doing once they think they've got an upper hand.
And while it doesn't exactly repeat, history will rhyme...

[SSJVegeta]

13. More tragedy wont make anything better. On the contrary, the only thing that can make anything better is a massive....

Unified, collective demand for the mmediate fundamental changes our party has only promised in increments for several generations.

[Vogon_Glory]

35. I must disagree with you. Violence can make people pay attention

I’m not saying this because I approve of violence. I don’t. Let me repeat myself: I do NOT approve of political violence in a constitutional republic. However, I am an amateur historian and I am all too aware that violence occurs during turbulent time and might (or might not) wake people up and might motivate them.

However, the guardrails that the writers of the Constitution put in place in 1787 and others have placed since have collapsed one after the other since 2000. I do worry that things won’t settle peacefully if the members of the Justice Department, the jurists, and the House of Representatives and US Senate had done their jobs.

[SSJVegeta]

36. It isnt the violence that makes rhem pay attention though.

Not in and of itself. Its the realization that something is very wrong and needs to change. Truth is we've had violence and tragedy on exponentially increasing levels, yet it has not driven the need for change.

At the end of the day, that change will come from a conscious collective decision to do so, with or without being triggered from a particular event.

[AverageOldGuy]

14. In a word:

YES. And it must be very horrible and it must affect Republican areas.

[txwhitedove]

15. This is ALL too terribly tragic, around the world from human genocide to starvation, mass roundup

and deportation, theft of votes, voting rights, public lands....daily horrors. At 74, I barely recognize my country.

[Woodwizard]

17. Innocent people get killed all the time

Nothing has been done for decades.

[MineralMan]

18. Sadly, Yes.

Until it does, we are not going to dig into any of it in a serious way.

So, until something like that happens, it will all just continue, I'm afraid.

[BeyondGeography]

19. Look at your own life

If you’re like the vast majority of people, when you learned the hard way, that’s when the lesson stuck.

[cayugafalls]

20. kick and rec, comments below.

Sadly the answer is yes, like a bad meal from a fast food joint, fast food authoritarianism departs the body as quickly as it enters.

I simply submit Kent State.

That singular moment forced the entire country to wake the hell up.

Sadly we went to sleep again and, well, here we are…

Just my opinion…I’m no scholar…

[LuvLoogie]

21. Children were mowed down at Sandyhook.

Nothing changed. The death squads must stay anonymously armed. This is America.

[Heidi]

22. Even tragic events apparently change nothing.

For example, we’re still having school shootings 26 years after Columbine.

[BobTheSubgenius]

23. My thoughts in this area are pretty bleak, I'm afraid.

Tragic events have happened again and again, and despite massive reaction at the time, Business As Usual is restored very quickly.

Sandy Hood, Parkland, Las Vegas..these and others were being called seminal, consequential events, but the only standout result was that they each created a ripple that sank very quickly, and it's that brief ripple that is the outlier. If the murder of hundreds of children are not watershed moments, pray tell what might qualify.

[Iamscrewed]

24. Apathy

To many people I know aren't paying attention or they believe the propaganda. It's going to take a major event to turn this shit show around.

[Littlered]

25. Some might claim we find ourselves in a paradox.

The cons might argue that we are picking and choosing the laws we believe are valid and should be enforced.

[uponit7771]

27. 95% of people are not politically tuned in at all.

[Ping Tung]

28. All politics is local. Very local. "My stubbed toe hurts more than your fractured skull."

"My freedom to buy guns is more important than poor people being deported or imprisoned."

[ananda]

29. Wow. isn't it already completely tragic already?

???

[KT2000]

30. YES!

A bunch of men in jeans, t-shirts, high powered weapons, are taking away people on this country. Why are they not required to show a warrant, their faces, their names, and badge numbers.
We have no idea if predators are dressing up like this and taking away women for their own purposes such as rape and trafficking.

This is insane and must stop. Will our politicians help? That is now who we have to depend on? Lord help us.

[Ghost of Tom Joad]

31. How long before masked men

begin grabbing women off the streets and sexually assault them. Nobody knows who these guys are and will be able to get away with it

[lees1975]

32. No one seems interested in stopping this.

A convicted felon, indicted for inciting an insurrection against the Capitol, stealing classified documents, and convicted of rape, was not stopped from being ineligible for re-election, and after spending four years whining and complaining and pointing to the ways he claimed to have been cheated out of the 2020 election, which should have been a warning about exactly how he was going to cheat to win the next one. He ran, and used a lot of what he claimed had been done to him, to win, and got elected. No one bothered to check whether or not he cheated, in fact, the opposition was proud of the fact that it lost and didn't whine about being cheated out of it.

The corrupt, bribed Supreme Court, which is the root cause of the problems that got us here, was allowed to sit without alteration during four years of Democratic party control of the White House and Senate, two years of full control of Congress. There were those who suggested putting their political careers on the line, being bold, taking a risk, and doing what it took to pack that damn court. In exchange for doing this, we get:
1] the overturning of Citizens United, taking billionaire money out of politics
2] the overturning of unbridled Presidential immunity from prosecution for committing crimes against the people
3] the restoration of Roe v. Wade
4] the expidition of Trump's court cases, delayed by the justice department's incompetence and foot dragging, and his interminable delay filings. One good justice, picking up those cases and trying them, could have gotten guilty verdicts on indictments that would have rendered him ineligible to run again and sent him to prison. Good reason, then, to re-open Alcatraz or keep Guantanamo in operation.

But no one did anything.

[Magoo48]

33. Yup, if we continue to have 0 agencies willing to enforce the law, people will become increasingly

frustrated and compelled to defend themselves. It’s a tragedy waiting to happen, all because not one group with the courage to do their fucking jobs. Protect and serve my ass. Cowards abound.

[YoshidaYui]

34. We must be living in the AMERICAN DARK AGES and I thought that was before 1776

we have now MASKED VIGILANTES ROAMING THE STREETS with AK 47S LOOKING to pick up any Brown or Black person unlucky enough to be out after Curfew what's next??? WHERE IS THE BATMAN WHEN NEEDED>>>

[chouchou]

37. I believe the operative word is selfishness.

We've heard this disgusting reality over and over:
"Well, Martha..let me tell you. What you say about those people and/or the ones that are having trouble, has
absolutely nothing to do with my life. I'm doing just peachy-keen as for now"
"I know. Lets go shopping!"

[Oneironaut]

38. Yes. Though even then lots of them won't care, sadly.