Sounds like my experience making a return at an Amazon Books physical store a few years ago. It was like an airport bookstore filled with bestsellers and generic giftable items, pretty boring selection. The returns counter was slammed but there weren’t many people browsing.

I suppose you worked at every Amazon location a decade ago? I think I’ll trust my girlfriend on this over some rando on here.

My girlfriend worked for Amazon doing finance stuff around a decade ago. They treated their software engineers like royalty and everyone else like robots. She said they had open bars and chefs preparing gourmet meals on demand that only the tech staff could use, while she was brown bagging her lunch every day. Maybe that’s common in that industry, I don’t know, but hearing that made me laugh because it sounds so Amazon.

Yes, this is more or less what I’ve been telling people for almost a year now.

For all the doom and gloom stories you see about the US, life has changed very little for most of us. Your average American is living their life as usual, focused on one day at a time. As long as we’re not hungry and don’t fear for our physical safety, there’s little that would compel us to risk imprisonment or deportation to oppose this regime. Those in power ensure that life is just comfortable enough for most of us that we don’t dare disrupt the status quo. Even for those that oppose Trump/MAGA, the vast majority won’t do anything more than attend a Saturday afternoon protest once or twice a year and then pat themselves on the back.

Conservatives have been wildly successful for generations at defunding and dismantling public schooling in this country. Our news media has been dumbed down by the likes of Fox News and relentless disinformation campaigns to the point where the news is more entertainment and propaganda than actual reporting. The result of poor schooling and a propagandized news media is that many Americans aren’t able to distinguish between fact and opinion and they’ll believe anything at face value. That’s the abridged version of how we ended up with so many dumbasses that consistently vote against their own interests, if they vote at all.

The Americans you meet on Lemmy and Reddit aren’t the norm. Most Americans are very poorly informed about world events and not curious enough to educate themselves. I would bet most Americans never had a single thought about Greenland or Venezuela until the last year or so. My MAGA neighbors don’t care what happens in your European country and they almost certainly couldn’t find it on a map.

You all need to stop waiting for Americans to rise up and save ourselves. I promise it’s not going to happen. Cut your losses and build up your militaries. Even if we all get lucky and MAGA implodes, our electorate is stupid enough that it’s only a matter of time before we’ll vote in equally terrible leadership.