They literally have domestic concentration camps. No, this isn’t a way to “slightly” waste their resources. This is a way to uselessly blow off steam for liberals.
I’ve seen this general thing around, where someone suggests some relatively mild form of resistance, like a protest or something, and people then criticize that idea with something that basically means “that is insufficient, either do the things I think will work, or you might as well do nothing”. There’s usually an implication that if people try such things, they’ll spend their energy on that instead of something more effective and therefore that if they can be convinced that it’s not useful, they’ll do whatever else one wants them to try instead.
I think this is incredibly counterproductive. People aren’t pressure vessels, they don’t have “steam” that will violently explode out if they can be stopped from letting it out for long enough. If someone has some idea, and you think it’s useless and pathetic and not even worth trying, and you convince them of that, they’re not going to suddenly refocus their efforts on your ideas instead, they’re just going to become demoralized, come to the conclusion that there’s nothing they can do, or at least that the only things that could help are things that they’re too scared to try, and so will just do nothing. If you’re right, and what they were proposing would be useless, then convincing them of this doesn’t gain you anything. There’s no point to doing it.
But if they try the thing, either you’re wrong and it has some effect, which would be good, or you’re right and it doesn’t, but now at least that person has gotten into the mindset that they can do things, and may meet others in the process that would enable group action in the future, and they’ll have taken some perceived risk, even if tiny, which can build the limits of what they can be convinced to do. Maybe they’ll try your thing next. But even if not, they haven’t made things worse.
If you have a different idea to what someone has suggested, it makes more sense to share it separately instead of starting with “that’s useless, do this instead”, because the implied attack makes people defensive and hostile to what you suggest. If you don’t have any ideas but think a suggested one has no effect, there’s no actual gain by convincing people of that. If you have ideas, but they’re something to the effect of “go start a revolution/civil war/ go out and shoot at people” and as such can’t be safely discussed in detail on the open internet, then it probably makes more sense to bring those things up with people and places where the cops can’t easily find it and moderators won’t remove it, and leave the people on the open internet to discuss those ideas that can for the moment still be discussed there.
I’ve seen this general thing around, where someone suggests some relatively mild form of resistance, like a protest or something,
This is not that. This is a suggestion to write a letter to a Christian Nationalist Empire asking them to stop funding its own super-PAC. “Getting into a mindset” is not a reason to send a letter directly to your oppressor authority. Sending a letter like this is useless at best, but is likely harmful, as it directly and conveniently shares your information with people who run domestic concentration camps.
And they don’t have everyone’s information already, considering they have both the government and media companies that have spent a great deal of effort building algorithmic profiles of everyone’s interests for advertising purposes, on their side?
The issue for authoritarians isn’t “not knowing who opposes them in order to arrest them”, it’s that you can’t arrest everyone who dislikes you and still maintain a functioning country, so they make a big show out of arresting and persecuting the most visible targets to make everyone else too scared to do anything. Doing something like this is probably not risk-free, but if they do decide to go after the letter-writters, whatever capacity to arrest, prosecute and detain those people that effort requires must then be used on them instead of on someone else that they probably should find a higher priority.
They literally have domestic concentration camps. No, this isn’t a way to “slightly” waste their resources. This is a way to uselessly blow off steam for liberals.
I’ve seen this general thing around, where someone suggests some relatively mild form of resistance, like a protest or something, and people then criticize that idea with something that basically means “that is insufficient, either do the things I think will work, or you might as well do nothing”. There’s usually an implication that if people try such things, they’ll spend their energy on that instead of something more effective and therefore that if they can be convinced that it’s not useful, they’ll do whatever else one wants them to try instead.
I think this is incredibly counterproductive. People aren’t pressure vessels, they don’t have “steam” that will violently explode out if they can be stopped from letting it out for long enough. If someone has some idea, and you think it’s useless and pathetic and not even worth trying, and you convince them of that, they’re not going to suddenly refocus their efforts on your ideas instead, they’re just going to become demoralized, come to the conclusion that there’s nothing they can do, or at least that the only things that could help are things that they’re too scared to try, and so will just do nothing. If you’re right, and what they were proposing would be useless, then convincing them of this doesn’t gain you anything. There’s no point to doing it.
But if they try the thing, either you’re wrong and it has some effect, which would be good, or you’re right and it doesn’t, but now at least that person has gotten into the mindset that they can do things, and may meet others in the process that would enable group action in the future, and they’ll have taken some perceived risk, even if tiny, which can build the limits of what they can be convinced to do. Maybe they’ll try your thing next. But even if not, they haven’t made things worse.
If you have a different idea to what someone has suggested, it makes more sense to share it separately instead of starting with “that’s useless, do this instead”, because the implied attack makes people defensive and hostile to what you suggest. If you don’t have any ideas but think a suggested one has no effect, there’s no actual gain by convincing people of that. If you have ideas, but they’re something to the effect of “go start a revolution/civil war/ go out and shoot at people” and as such can’t be safely discussed in detail on the open internet, then it probably makes more sense to bring those things up with people and places where the cops can’t easily find it and moderators won’t remove it, and leave the people on the open internet to discuss those ideas that can for the moment still be discussed there.
This is not that. This is a suggestion to write a letter to a Christian Nationalist Empire asking them to stop funding its own super-PAC. “Getting into a mindset” is not a reason to send a letter directly to your oppressor authority. Sending a letter like this is useless at best, but is likely harmful, as it directly and conveniently shares your information with people who run domestic concentration camps.
And they don’t have everyone’s information already, considering they have both the government and media companies that have spent a great deal of effort building algorithmic profiles of everyone’s interests for advertising purposes, on their side?
The issue for authoritarians isn’t “not knowing who opposes them in order to arrest them”, it’s that you can’t arrest everyone who dislikes you and still maintain a functioning country, so they make a big show out of arresting and persecuting the most visible targets to make everyone else too scared to do anything. Doing something like this is probably not risk-free, but if they do decide to go after the letter-writters, whatever capacity to arrest, prosecute and detain those people that effort requires must then be used on them instead of on someone else that they probably should find a higher priority.