@inthehands I’m rather surprised there haven’t been the anarchist saboteurs that sometimes showed up and started fires during the George Floyd protests. Perhaps because the counter-actions have been so spontaneous, and locally organic, rather than giant groups marching and chanting, where outside folks can slide in and cause mischief. Or perhaps those saboteurs are now working for ICE.

@inthehands oh, I’m not advocating it; I’m just pointing out why the chickenshit ICE folks start wigging out when the crowd arrives— they’re personally cowards, suddenly confronted by real personal courage, and while they’re excited to bust heads, they’re imaginative enough to know they stand little chance personally if that kind of amassed courage were to suddenly raise arms against them.

@inthehands the Trump folks set about hiring the worst gun-nut folks who for ages fantasized about raising arms against their fellow citizens, and mostly hired them for that reason; but those folks are also really quite chickenshit, yet just imaginative enough to consider their chances if the crowds willing and determined enough to stand against them despite the explicit threats, armed with nothing but whistles, decided instead to show up for war.

@inthehands exactly. I think we’ve seen the Trump regime demonstrate they don’t care about their opponents rallying and protesting. But spontaneous action, even just blowing whistles, seems to scare the shit out of them.

@inthehands I think people outside the US largely don’t understand the sheer size of US cities, and the widely spread population within, which makes it hard to have the kind of spontaneous mass demonstrations that could coalesce in cities like Europe’s. A million or two people trying to converge for a rally/protest in downtown Minneapolis would turn the metro’s road infrastructure into one enormous parking lot, and most wouldn’t arrive.

Instead, people take action locally.