If little actions like that didn’t happen, the international stage would see us as a monolith all supporting Trump. Your only source of truth would be our media.
I get that sentiment, but consider: there are orders of magnitude more people in the US than Greenland. As such, if Americans go into communities for Greenland to demonstrate to them that we don’t all support Trump in such a way, the result would be less a “little thing” and more the people actually using that community getting bombarded with Americans apologizing for the actions of other Americans in a space meant to be for Greenland. I’m not from there and so can’t say for sure how that comes across, but I at least imagine that were I from Greenland, I’d probably find this far more annoying than reassuring.
Isnt that exactly what the post is addressing? It’s something us-americans do for themselves, for their image in front of the world. It is not done for the greenlanders and therefore leaves a bitter taste.
Many of us have empathy, and feel terrible that the rest of the world has to deal with the bullshit that a third of our country and half our political system has voted for. Your comment seems to be blind to that fact.
and feel terrible that the rest of the world has to deal with the bullshit that a third of our country and half our political system has voted for
And that energy needs to be directed at reducing and preventing the bullshit. Apologizing to Greenland does nothing for the bullshit they have to deal with.
huh? that’s literally not the point of apologies? they’re explicitly about taking responsibility, acknowledging harm done, expressing genuine remorse and committing to real actionable change.
the issue in the OP is when people say “I’m sorry about the orange cheeto - I didn’t vote for this you don’t deserve to be treated this way” - this is useless and performative and serves to mostly make the person apologising feel better.
instead a real apology would take ownership and commit to action: “I’m sorry I didn’t do more, and here’s what I’ll do going forward (mobilise, organize, agitate, etc)”
and even then it might still not make a difference and people might still hate you but we don’t fight fascists to win or to feel better about ourselves but because they are fascists…
If little actions like that didn’t happen, the international stage would see us as a monolith all supporting Trump. Your only source of truth would be our media.
That would be horrible.
I get that sentiment, but consider: there are orders of magnitude more people in the US than Greenland. As such, if Americans go into communities for Greenland to demonstrate to them that we don’t all support Trump in such a way, the result would be less a “little thing” and more the people actually using that community getting bombarded with Americans apologizing for the actions of other Americans in a space meant to be for Greenland. I’m not from there and so can’t say for sure how that comes across, but I at least imagine that were I from Greenland, I’d probably find this far more annoying than reassuring.
Isnt that exactly what the post is addressing? It’s something us-americans do for themselves, for their image in front of the world. It is not done for the greenlanders and therefore leaves a bitter taste.
Many of us have empathy, and feel terrible that the rest of the world has to deal with the bullshit that a third of our country and half our political system has voted for. Your comment seems to be blind to that fact.
And that energy needs to be directed at reducing and preventing the bullshit. Apologizing to Greenland does nothing for the bullshit they have to deal with.
All apologies only server to make the apologizer feel better. Should we just stop doing it altogether?
huh? that’s literally not the point of apologies? they’re explicitly about taking responsibility, acknowledging harm done, expressing genuine remorse and committing to real actionable change.
the issue in the OP is when people say “I’m sorry about the orange cheeto - I didn’t vote for this you don’t deserve to be treated this way” - this is useless and performative and serves to mostly make the person apologising feel better.
instead a real apology would take ownership and commit to action: “I’m sorry I didn’t do more, and here’s what I’ll do going forward (mobilise, organize, agitate, etc)”
and even then it might still not make a difference and people might still hate you but we don’t fight fascists to win or to feel better about ourselves but because they are fascists…