To all the Europeans (and some Americans) who ask "why don't we all protest???" Here are some answers.
THREAD:

1. This is a big country. Like, really really big. And the capital isn't the center. Putting 10 million protesters in the Washington DC wouldn't affect anything major.

2. General strikes are illegal. Anyone trying to organize them can be jailed.

3. This country is VERY polarized. Even if you did illegally manage a general strike, it would necessarily be partisan. The other half of the country would brandish guns and make "citizens arrests."

4. While one side of the country protested and struck, the other half would counter-protest and scab.

5. To effectively shut down production enough to make capital care, you would have to protest everywhere all at once in huge numbers, in culturally distinct places. Good luck.

6. The country is polarized most along urban and rural lines. The rurals are line with Trump and the plutocrats. The urbans are in line with the left.

So what possible good would it do to shut down the very urban centers that agree with you? The rurals don't care. They laugh.

7. Our Constitution and past practice insulates lawmakers from consequences: Senate apportionment, gerrymandering, electoral college, etc. We don't have snap elections or votes of no confidence.

Insulated lawmakers can ride out months of protest with impunity.

8. The press is incapable of joining in a chorus of fury, in part due to the two-party system. The press is conditioned toward "balance", forced to maintain the illusion of "centrist objectivity" which requires treating both parties as equally legitimate or equally deceitful.

9. Partly because the press cannot join in and partly because there is a very well-financed conservative media with a cult following, Republicans are impervious to shame.

There is no sense of "collective good" or fear of the press. They only fear being flanked from their RIGHT.

10. For Republicans catering to conservative propaganda, anything that "makes the libs cry" is obviously good, no matter how cruel or stupid it is. Even if it means killing themselves, their voters & their audience in a pandemic!

A bunch of liberals protesting is joyous catnip.

11. The only thing these people fear is being expelled from office, having their taxes raised and losing the cheating advantages that give their white conservative evangelical minority undue power.

They're not remotely afraid of people in the streets, or a competent press.

12. Those of us who are old enough learned this lesson in the runup to the invasion of Iraq. The Iraq War protests were bigger than the Vietnam protests.

They did energize a new generation of activists, but they accomplished absolutely nothing in terms of stopping it.

So that's why Americans seem so "housebroken" that we don't just protest for change.

There are at least a dozen different reasons why it doesn't work here, most of them rooted in our size, polarization and Constitutional dysfunction. /end

oh, one footnote: protest CAN work here to shame a majority into acknowledging the rights and suffering of a specific disadvantaged group.

Shocking the nation's conscience to provide equal rights does work.

But that's not the same as a majoritarian protest to force change.