Kudos to the person who is sending the correct message. Everyone who believes in protecting the US Constitution should fly the US flag upside down.
Is that the State Department flag or is it a flag near the State Department?
Performative resistance from inside the machine. Cute gesture, but distress signals only work when someone’s actually coming to help. Meanwhile, career diplomats keep writing memos and processing visas while posting their quiet protests on social.
Remember when we thought these symbols meant something would change? Now it’s just content for the outrage cycle. Tomorrow there’ll be a strongly worded letter, maybe some resigned LinkedIn posts from mid-level FSOs.
The machinery keeps grinding, upside down flag or not. Though I suppose watching institutional despair go viral is peak 2025.
The State is in distress. Who will answer the call? Who will come it’s aid? We have all been summoned.
That seems like a very bad sign. Someone wanted a message to get out to the public, but I’m not entirely sure what can be effectively done about it. Credit to the person with the balls to send out the warning, though.
I’m not entirely sure what can be effectively done about it.
History offers no control groups; there is no “right” way to proceed. What’s certain is that “nothing” is not the answer.
Maybe we should double down on capitalism again.
It’s the only move the US has used in living memory.
let me help you understand.
I love that you linked this through fucking amazon.
This is gonna be in my view history on our shared account, and my wife is gonna ask if I’m okay lmao
You reminded me me of when I was going through my dystopian fiction phase of reading the first time…I had a big stack of said novels to buy at Barnes and Noble.
They asked if I wanted to sign up for their loyalty card and I was so taken aback. Like…no…I do not want to be in your list.
;) very intentional on my part.
There’s nothing that can be done. Republicans have every bit of power there is. At least for the next two years.
This is the message of the enemy. I am not sure what there is to be done, but to say this:
There’s nothing that can be done.
is to give up. The only thing that we ordinary people can know is that the democratic party is unable/unwilling to form an effective resistance right now.
There is always one type of power the people have.
Imagine being the person running this up the pole at the fucking state department.
The gravity well produced from the balls of this person (all genders included) is pulling me from miles away.
balls so big they make black holes
I mean the US is certainly in distress
Definitely. Do we know if the people who wanted a criminal moron in charge are still cheering him on, or are they starting to catch on to the fact that his plan always was to thoroughly fuck everyone over? Well, everyone but his clique.
They’re still cheering. No other awareness to be had
As long as the right people get hurt they’re happy.
Republicans would shit their own pants just to make us smell it.
They’re gonna be a lot less happy when they try putting armed citizens in camps and they get fucking shot.
Holy hell, the shit the pants statement is so on point.
They’re completely caught in the misinfo and still cheering him on. Anyone getting hurt must have deserved it and if they’re getting hurt it just shows how important it is to hurt the others back.
in south park he fucks illegal canadians to death, but in real life he is doing it to americans
Eh. The majority are chillin.
This is exactly what they voted for.
The majority did not vote for this. The majority of voters didn’t even vote for this. He only won a plurality (<50%)
He got the support of all the people who voted for him and all the people who didn’t vote against him.
Lucky the USA allows everyone to vote no matter what; doesn’t schedule it for a standard workday, meaning nobody has to choose between feeding their kids and voting; plans out enough polling stations so that people don’t have to wait for hours without access to food, water, or seating; doesn’t surprise deregister voters with little notice; and sends out absentee ballots reliably with sufficient time to return them…
Georgia had both mail-in absentee voting and, especially, 2 weeks of early voting including on weekends. In most places the early voting lines weren’t terribly long. On election day most places were short.
Most people still didn’t vote.
Some people couldn’t vote. Millions of assholes just didn’t bother and are partly to blame.
No vote. No opinion.
He got the majority of votes. He got the majority of the electoral.
The majority of participating voters wanted this.
Just because you guys cannot fathom how anyone would want this doesn’t mean this is the same panic inducing situation for them. The majority of politically active people in the United States of America wanted this to happen as evidence of the election we just held.
No. He got a plurality of the votes. Not a majority.
The majority of participating voters voted against him.
How many times do you need that repeated to understand?
I guess one more time?
Outdated data. The votes were not done being counted on November 10th. Trump got 49.8% to Harris’ 48.3%
Ah. Fair enough. Last time I had seen it it was more than 50% still. Well then by a technicality not a majority then. I do love a technically correct statement so I’ll give you that one.
Still. More people voted for this than didn’t vote for this.
That’s not the final count
Is this real? Nobody is reporting on it.
Which of the conservative media in the US do you expect to report it?
It is on reddit
I’m surprised they haven’t pulled it the way they went ban crazy this morning.
Right??? Protest coordination on traditional social media is like… iffy now, at best.
It really makes me wonder how people were able to pull this shit off in the 50s, 60s and 70s when we can’t make it happen today with everything available to us.
They still had third places where they could organize face-to-face. Think union halls, fraternal organizations (which us Millennials only know about from old cartoons), churches, etc.
See also this Adam Conover video, which isn’t specifically about organizing to protest but nevertheless is pretty insightful about it.
they didn’t use maligned, monitored areas for communication… people today should coordinate face-to-face or at worst via telephone if they haven’t already exposed themselves.
Based on white people Twitter ban this is similar to Luigi situation…
People are just overwhelming their modding ability.
It will be taken down and the opposition sentiment will be supressed in due course.
It looks like this is the end.
The house has been burning and smoking for hours and people are still thinking that the fire just started
This has happened in México too, the most famously recorded one was during Enrique Peña Nieto’s term (sorry for linking to YT). They said the flag thing was an accident, but it was during the Flag Day and everyone was angry with the way the government was handling things. The government-influenced media was angry with the military because “they made a mistake”, but we all knew why it happened.
- Is this real
- What does it mean?
- Where are we in terms of worrying? Should I begin to start to think about worrying or something more urgent?
- I see little reason to doubt it
- It means whoever hoisted it considers there to be a crisis, which is consistent with accounts of public offices being overtaken by random young white men who are rapidly taking control.
- Speaking as a non-American political scientist having worked a little with rule of law and fascism, it seems a bit late to start worrying. Think about what you can do for yourself, your neighbours, and your country, urgently or in the longer term. It’s going to be ugly for a while.
#3 depends where you are on the hit list I suppose. I’m trans, so I’m well past worry-o-clock and am actively making arrangements to leave the country. Someone like a cishet white male tech worker has a lot less to worry about though
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I think so.
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That’s unclear but my take is that this is an expression of the distress felt by the employees, and perhaps the only possible outlet for their feelings. I suspect that it’s more likely the action of one or two people rather that some kind of collectively approved signal.
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I just don’t know. I’m not even American but I feel very discombobulated.
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The new “phone, wallet, keys”
deleted by creator
There’s only one way this gets stopped. And the people that would need to do it think they’ll have a ‘prime minister’ title when the dust settles and not that they’ll be chucked out a window. It’s some weapons grade stupid and apathy letting this happen and they’re just hoping that god king chooses to keep them around it’s all so pathetic
Wasn’t the upside down us flag thing used by j6’ers? Are the line workers taking it back as the symbol of a stolen country for themselves, or is this Musk and crew indicating we’re fucked?
It’s a sign of distress.
They were distressed, but it’s only because they’re sore losers and couldn’t cope with Trump losing.
This is actual distress, it’s appropriate this time.Its nothing exclusive to J6. Its an international sign that an insurrection or coup has occurred or is occurring.
Not quite, it’s an international sign that a vessel is in distress.
Then mostly right wing lunatics co-opted it to mean that our country is in distress.
Which they co-opted from protesters in the 60’s, rallying against the Vietnam war, which they co-opted from the Revolutionary war, where (allegedly, much harder to source), the revolutionaries also flew the Union Jack inverted. Its history to mean insurrection in the US is as old as the US.
Its been used in many other instances internationally, and yes, also at sea with a much deeper history to signal distress. Regardless, the pedantry is both technically and figuratively misplaced.
which they co-opted from the Revolutionary war, where (allegedly, much harder to source), the revolutionaries also flew the Union Jack inverted.
If they did, I assume a half dozen vexillology enthusiasts with good eyesight got very concerned.
also flew the Union Jack inverted
How could they tell?
It has been used by punk bands and Anarchists waaay before that