[mooglevich]

For what it's worth, I don't know a single person that thinks this is a good idea. However, I'm a software developer living in NYC, so the context of my socioeconomic/cultural bubble isn't representative of the average American's.

A few folks have already posted good points. This is a classic Trump/asshole negotiation tactic. This distracts from the clamor to release the Epstein files.

But what I think is pretty depressing to me is that, as someone else posted, lots of people (even the ones I personally know who don't like Trump) are just so sick of politics and inured against all this madness that they prefer to think about other things. There's also a feeling of helplessness, as it's true that there's not much that an individual can do to affect immediate, meaningful change. My best friend and I went door knocking in PA in 2024 to try to turn out votes for Kamala Harris. He was super passionate about politics. Since then he's shrugged and has literally said to me, "Well, we tried. Let's just focus on our own individual lives." When I try to bring this topic up with other folks, including my best friend, I often get a - "Well they voted for this. Our live are still good. Let them suffer." And when tariffs and other international relations, such as Greenland come up, most people I know tend to just shrug and don't have much to say.

It's a really strange and interesting phenomenon I've observed. Since I strongly believe that smart phone and social media addiction have deranged most individuals, I of course have a bias to think that most people are a mixture of easily distracted by this very distressful situation and psychologically uncomfortable with the aforementioned feeling of not being able to do anything with an immediate result, i.e. no instant gratification that we've been conditioned to expect. But then I read books about history, and it seems like this behavioral pattern isn't unique to this smart phone era, so maybe it's just human nature. Most people probably don't believe in an abstract principle strongly enough to really sacrifice or even be that uncomfortable about it. I'd like to think this isn't the case, so I've tried to modulate my conversations to pleading with people I know (again, most of whom are against Trump and all this), to at least have a conversation where we can agree this sucks. But then, it's another maddening thing, where a lot of folks have told me - That's obvious, why do we need to talk about it.

Regardless - I can only speak for myself when I say that I am wholly, 100%, and passionately against this. I'm just guessing, but I suspect that your confusion on why there's no strong movement against this stems from a large-scale prisoner's dilemma (most individuals here are optimizing for their own local maxima, which leads to our collective minima), and the distressing phenomenon that most humans probably don't like to just be assholes, they try to follow the rules and norms of society, but we have here an asshole who doesn't, so it's difficult to combat him and this administration.

Sigh. Sorry for the long post. Maybe it helps. I don't know, it's a strange time. Even taking the time to at least explain what I've personally witnessed is only my attempt to try to put out the right karma in the universe against this anti-intellectual, indecent behavior.

[Manheim]

No need to apologize, quite the opposite. This is exactly the kind of insight I was hoping for. I read the NYT and other U.S. papers and get the editorial perspective, but I still feel, and many here in Scandinavia feel the same, that we can’t fully understand what’s going on at the level of everyday experience in the U.S. That’s why your ‘street‑level analysis’ is valuable and much appreciated.

[phs318u]

Thank you for taking the time to write this. I feel for you and understand (though disagree with) the nihilism of your friends. As an outsider, it saddens me to bear witness to the beginning of the sunset of the American epoch. What a bold, noble experiment the USA was!

[deeg]

And to think that we did this to ourselves for a reality TV con man who bankrupts casinos.

[netsharc]

I think the feeling of helplessness is reasonable.. Maybe they see how much more they have to sacrifice a lot more to fight this tyranny of stupidity. Only when the population has lost a lot more will they get mad enough to say "well we've lost too much" (if you see how protests go big in other oppressive regimes - the famous quote is "civilization is 3 missed meals away from riots").

Maybe it's all the Nazi thuggery of ICE scaring them, that keeping quiet feels much more safer.

Disclaimer: I don't live under the Trump tyranny.