Losing My Perspicacity, August 18, 2025

Good morning and Happy Monday! Thanks for starting your day with me.

I just found out that a friendly recipe blog I follow has 700k subscribers on Substack and 500k on TikTok. BRB, I’m going to switch to being a food influencer, because daymn. Just kidding, while I do like trying new recipes, I too often wind up sweaty, frustrated, and defeated in the kitchen, though perhaps that would make for some good TikTok videos?

Just one topic today, and one I’d really like your opinion on.

You may have seen over the weekend that Israelis have taken to the streets, en masse, to protest the genocide in Gaza and Benjamin Netanyahu’s far-right government. According to WaPo, thousands “stayed home from work, flooded city streets, and blocked roads and highways across the country.”

And honestly, good for them.

That got me thinking, why haven’t Americans taken to the streets the same way citizens of other nations have? In the last few years, mass protests in Georgia, South Korea, France, Greece, Hungary, Turkey, Angola, Kenya, Brazil, and other countries have erupted across the globe, as “regular people” decide they’ve had enough of the global elite and the damage they’re doing to the rest of us. But why haven’t we seen something similar in the US?

Before you object to the question, let me finish. Yes, #NoKings Day led many protests around the nation. Indeed, there have been groups out there regularly protesting the military takeover of their cities, particularly in LA and Washington, DC. And yeah, Alaskans in Anchorage and Juneau turned out to protest Putin’s arrival at the recent summit, and it was wonderful to see. I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the Tesla Takeovers, which have been ongoing since Elon Musk dug his grimy little hands into the federal government in January. Many groups have put their lives on hold to be out there day in and day out. I want to recognize that before we move on.

But what I’m talking about are the kinds of protests we see in other countries, where citizens engage in a national strike, shutting down the nation and flooding regional capitals until the government appeases them, or at least acknowledges their grievances. Surely, if there were ever a time for Americans to set aside their differences and take to the streets, this would be it. Of course, people in other nations have far better social safety nets than we do in this country.

It’s not like there aren’t enough reasons; take your pick of brutalizing and kidnapping immigrants, the rollback of reproductive rights, DOGE’s destruction of whatever safety net we had to begin with; the “Big, Beautiful Bill,” the cost of healthcare, Trump’s betrayal of farmers, the canceling of student loan forgiveness, damage to the environment, corportate welfare, police brutality, taxbreaks for billionaires, the US complicity in genocides in Ukraine and Gaza, the demonization of the LGBTQ+ community…it’s seems there’s something for everyone. After all, is anyone in this country, outside of the few elite, getting what they want?

And while we certainly see protests happening around the country — mostly on social media, because legacy media seems to be underreporting a lot of it — why can’t we collectively get our shit together and force some change? Why are the protests we do have, like #NoKings and Tesla Takedowns, always scheduled for weekends? Why can’t we pull a national strike together? (Yes, many people can not take a day off from work to protest, but many of us can. And should. With great privilege comes great social responsibility.)

I’ve been thinking about this for weeks, and I decided to throw the question out to Bluesky, to see others’ take on it. Bluesky is an outlier on social media. My curated timeline, at least, is all news, politics, and organizing, all the time. But head over to FB or Instagram, and you don’t see a lot of people talking politics. Perhaps that’s my fault for who I follow, but it also seems like a lot of people have decided to shrug and wait Trump out. Needless to say, it’s hard to care about someone’s kid’s promposal when ambulances are making multiple runs from “Alligator Alcatraz” each day and world-renowned universities are being forced into “oversight” by the same crowd that wants to dismantle the Department of Education.

I mentioned before that I’ve spent some time living in France, and the French love a good protest as much as they love a cigarette and a bottle of red wine. It’s in their blood, which is why we have Broadway musicals that heavily feature barricades as characters. But America was born out of protest. Does anyone remember the Sons of Liberty? Tarring and feathering those loyal to the crown? Big war against the King of England? Alexander Hamilton? Lafayette? Tea in the harbor? Ring any bells?

I think our Founding Fathers (racist bigots, sexists, and elitists that they were) would be appalled by how complacent we’ve become. For all their faults — of which there are many — there’s no denying that the Founding Fathers risked treason and hanging to get out from under King George’s thumb. And they went out of their way to codify our right to protest our government in the very First Amendment to the Constitution.

Serious question: What have those of us who are comparatively comfortable in our lives risked lately? (I’m asking myself this, as well.)

So why doesn’t America protest like other countries? Here’s some of what Bluesky had to say:

(You can follow Amber Hunt’s podcast here.)

Good points, across the board.

America is much bigger than most foreigners who have never been here realize. In France, I could drive for six hours and pass through three countries. In the U.S., I can drive for six hours and still be in Illinois. But I think the Women’s March, the BLM protests, and #NoKings all proved that we have many central gathering places in the U.S., in towns big and small. For example, Chicagoland, from top to bottom, spans approximately 70 miles, encompassing hundreds of suburbs, and Chicago itself is divided into nearly 80 communities. Yet we still found key gathering places for #NoKings. I drove one town over to join a suburban protest, but I know plenty of people who went to downtown Chicago or other surrounding communities.

The issue of things not being bad enough yet, or people thinking protests don’t work, is concerning. Mainly because when fascism advances, and then recedes, things never go quite back to the way they were. Fascism creeps, digs its nails in, and never quite gives up everything it took.

Take the Patriot Act, passed by Congress just weeks after 9/11, with sixty-two Democrats (and three Republicans) voting against it in the House. Russ Feingold (D-WI) was the only one to vote against the bill in the Senate. In the end, the Act allowed the federal government to violate the privacy of its citizens in a way we still haven’t managed to roll back more than 20 years later.

From The Brennan Center:

While some of the provisions of the Patriot Act were allowed to sunset in 2020, much of the apparatus that was put in place to surveil Americans remains in place. And now the Trump administration controls it.

What power do we have if not in the streets? It’s certainly not at the ballot box, where we’re being gerrymandered into one nation under the GOP.

It’s true that Donald Trump will not be in power forever. Democrats may even be able to take back Congress next year, which could provide a significant obstacle to his agenda, assuming Democrats get a lot tougher before then. But how long will it take us to put everything back together? And will we ever get back all the programs that were in place before DOGE took a sledgehammer to the budget? Will we ever get rid of ICE? Will we shut down all the detention centers? Will doctors flood back into all the red states they are leaving? Likely not.

The bottom line is that America can’t afford another year, another six months, another month of Donald Trump. Every day we wait, Trump and Stephen Miller cause more pain and heartache to more and more people. People are dying. People are losing everything. Kids are not being fed. Cures are not being researched. International allies are moving on without the United States of America. The most marginalized are being abandoned to death and despair.

We have to do something. Is a nationwide strike the answer? I don’t know. But I do know we can’t keep going on like this.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on this one. Why don’t Americans protest like other nations? Can we? Or is the media just not reporting it? And can the red and blue states ever find common ground on which to unite?

The High Note

Each Day, I do my best to leave you with a smile on your face, a song in your heart, and the will to fight another day.

I know the above was pretty heavy, so please enjoy this segment of John Oliver’s recent piece on deferred prosecutions in corporate America, and one, solitary man, who lived his dream. (You want to hang in there from 13:35 until 16:15.)

Hey, survive and advance out there today, kids. Don’t let the bastards get you down.