• JayleneSlide@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    23
    ·
    3 days ago

    May I suggest reading a history book? “Lies My Teacher Told Me” is excellent. “A People’s History of the United States” is also great. Or, maybe you would like to understand how you’ve been manipulated. Well, cool, maybe “Manufacturing Consent.”

    One of the significant contradictions of democracy in the US is that it was largely shaped by various forms of illegal civil disobedience against entrenched power structures. Such civil disobedience is retrospectively seen as justified, committed by people who are retrospectively seen as heroes. But each successive generation is demanded to believe that any further civil disobedience is unreasonable.

    Just a small selection of a long history of US civil disobedience:

    • Boston Tea Party
    • Great Railroad Strike
    • Haymarket affair
    • Battle of Blair Mountain - largest armed insurrection in America since the Civil War
    • Selma to Montgomery Marches

    There is a lot we get to take for granted from our comfortable, privileged perches built with the blood and tears of those who would perform civil disobedience.