I think the rich need a reminder...

Why do you think the cops have tanks now
- I was gonna say, we get shot for protesting now...probably gotta change that part first.
  
  People got shot before too. Lots of people. The fight for worker's rights was long and bloody.
  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-union_violence_in_the_United_States
  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Union_violence_in_the_United_States
  https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/theminewars-labor-wars-us/
  
  Now? The pinkertons never left, and they started ages ago. Protesters got shot then too.
- Strikers were bombed back in the day by aircrafts. Unionization was won through enduring warfare yet we just gave it away. Shows how powerful unionization is that the elites are completely terrified of it, and that they have surpressed the history of it so few will know how much blood was shed to get it.

“Governments don't want a population capable of critical thinking, they want obedient workers, people just smart enough to run the machines and just dumb enough to passively accept their situation.”
― George Carlin
- He was really wrong about voting though. If it didn't matter, the fascist GOP wouldn't be fighting so hard to prevent people from voting.
  
  Working from inside a system that has been corrupt from the beginning doesn't work
  
  He wasn't wrong. During this time the parties although different and Republicans being shitter, were much closer together. They were both pro corporate with differences on social issues.
  Today.. The Republicans have gone full batshit trying to overthrow democracy. I guarantee you, if George was alive he'd be saying VOTE and vote for Democrats until we've gotten rid of the dangerous fascists.
  
  I love that there's always someone who brings this one thing up...
  Nobody's right 100% of the time. But he was right far more often than not, and far more correct than most anyone else running their mouths about the same subjects.
- So we need to make the machines complicated enough so we rise above the intelligence needet to not passivly accept our situation?

- When violence is used to maintain the status quo, announcing up front that you're unwilling to use violence in response tells those in power that they need not listen to you.
  
  The sad thing is that we don't even need to use violence. We have the power to bring this country to a halt with nothing more than a well organized revolt.
- People who think you can solve all problems by stating that you are in the moral right, instead of fighting for what you believe in, really show their true colors of being woefully ignorant to how history has always worked. This end of history neoliberal narrative has truly rotted peoples brains and made them unable to intellectually understand how to stand up for themselves.
- The whole point of a protest is to show that you have sufficient numbers that if you were to riot, it would get ugly.
- So what are we supposed to do? Take up arms and start shooting?
  There is no alternative to peaceful protest.
  
  As a really great character once said: Get angry. Angry gets shit done.
  Peaceful protests are pointless.

They got wise to that and called in the police and military to help them.
- They did that back in the day too.
  
  “A society grows great when old men plant trees in whose shade they shall never sit.” over the bodies of tyrants
- Nah, too unreliable - the worst of the lot hired private armies to assault and murder strikers.
  
  The Pinkertons literally became the FBI and CIA.

I feel like it’s the working class who forgot.
The rich are well aware, which is why they put so much energy into making us think that isn’t an option.
- I wonder if them gunning down union protesters would be suddenly legal if needed.
  
  It already is with regular protesters.
  They just gotta kill one. They don’t want to kill their entire work force. They just want to subjugate them.

I love this sentiment but I hope we can keep lemmy a nice place.
Like I'm sure we all agree that a good billionaire lynching would be awesome, but I also don't want to crow on about it day after day. Escalate or bust.
- Escalation takes build up. The French revolution was all murmurs and bitching until it wasn't
  
  Not just build up, but actual conflict.
  Revolutionaries aren't spontaneous creations. It takes decades of conflict between the population and the state to harden the people into what eventually becomes the revolutionary army.
  Almost everybody here with their soft bodies and their soft minds is not capable of taking part in 6-48 months of revolutionary civil war tomorrow. You have to look at the conflicts of France over the last 10 years between its population and the state to understand what prolonged build up of radicals and radical forces looks like. Decades of a population actively doing battle with its state over various national things before ever reaching the point of "fuck it we ball".
  
  That's true but I wonder if it translates to modern times.
  I should learn about the Arab Spring...
- Oh, yeah. Lemmy can be the Eurovision of social media!
- I’m sure we all agree that a good billionaire lynching would be awesome
  Now that's a bold assumption
  
  too much?

- Shit France is already leading the way this century and showing us weak Americans how protests are supposed to be done. No one protests like the French protest.

Look up why the christmas bonus became a thing.
- I just got a subscription to the jelly of the month club. It's the gift that keeps on giving.
- "Here's your once-a-year appeasement sum. Don't spend all of that Bed Bath and Beyond coupon in one place."
  
  I love the absurdity of autocratic money hoarders wanting you to spread the wealth of a coupon across multiple BB&B branches 😂

What gets me is:
If people have more money to spend, they buy more things.
The more things they buy, the more money goes into the pockets of corporations and the CEOs.
It's literally a win win situation that doesn't end in the Uber Rich being chased down by hungry angry mobs.
- But that means more people have a chance to get wealthy (provided taxes aren't raised to match). Why pay people more and have more wealthy people when you can pay less and have all the money?
- Because all those CEOs will never think further than the next ten minutes. In short term that means only less money for them since for any extra unit of money they give to their worker it is not garantied they buy something from the own company. They only ever see what money they don't get right now, and not what they could get potentially in long term.
- But your talking about the future, not next week.
  Plus, your assuming that there is any sort of geographical loyalty.
- People already have too much money to spend, that's the issue.
  
  Maybe in your imagination, but in reality a huge chunk of the population lives paycheck to paycheck.

"Redress." It's "redress of grievances," not "address." They can have similar meanings, but they aren't quite synonyms.
- “Redress” is typically used when referring to correcting or remedying a wrong or injustice. It implies a sense of compensation or restitution for something that has gone awry. For example, if a customer receives a faulty product from a company, they may seek redress by asking for a refund or replacement.
  “Address,” on the other hand, is a more general term that refers to dealing with or attending to a particular matter. It can be used in a variety of contexts, from addressing a letter to addressing a problem. It doesn’t necessarily imply any wrongdoing or injustice.
  https://thecontentauthority.com/blog/redress-vs-address
  
  Yes. That's precisely my point. Thanks for spelling it out.

I wish we could back to that other option. It seems quite reasonable.
- "Be the change you want to see in the world."

The Waltons are a family. Just saying.

I keep blocking work reform pages but more keep popping up from different instances. Is there a way to globally block any instance that contains a specific word or phrase?
- I mean, each to their own, but do you have a greivance with workers collectively backing themselves and their colleagues?
  (In answer to your question, as far as I know you have to block communities one by one. The only other alternative would be to view only your subscribed communities)
  
  I have no grievance with them, I just don't care for the grievances they share with their employers. It was easy on reddit since it was just one sub I had to filter but here they keep popping up.

It's eerie how little opposition this kind of murder/violence fantasies get here
- It took a lot of blood and violence to get to the point where we all think blood and violence isn't required in some situations. Millions and millions of people struggle every single day while the rich look for ways to take away their rights. It's literally human nature to want to fight back against that.
- It isn't a fantasy, it's history. It is how our comfortable world was built, and if you think it is eerie then you should reevaluate how you feel about the benefits it has brought you.
- What do you suggest? Only the state can have monopoly on violence? Only the government which is controlled by rich people can use violence?
- Sometimes that's the way
- It's funny, I think they are all bark and no bite. When push comes to shove we often see their fantasies amount to nothing more than materialistic looting. They will never live out their dreams of lynching billionaires.
- I agree. Its really weird. They have such a bloodlust

I think the poor need a reminder about arenas...
- Aww baby needs attention so he found a place to troll in... Everybody look at this guy, see how edgy he is?!

I love how the tankies are going to get all these instances shut down.
- The tankies have been on lemmy longer than anyone else (and helped develop it I guess?) And they are still around. The normal instances have defederated from them and no one has to interact with them, but they still exist.
  Whether you consider it a pro or a con, there are no advertisers terrified of negative brand association here, and the only way an instance gets shut down is if it gets caught hosting explicitly criminal content.
  Lastly this isn't a tankie. Tankies are insanely pro-military, obsessed with nationalism (for places like china or russia usually), and one of their favorite pastimes is denying the negative history of their favorite "communists".
  This is just a dark joke about the history of how workers rights were originally fought for, in america and elsewhere. Look up the coal wars.