I guess also, you have to keep in mind that people become accustomed to abusive situations; I see on the women’s subreddits all the time that women are describing an abusive relationship, and then asking “Is this a red flag? It’s been like this for 10 years (or whatever)”. They are so immersed in the situation that they have become desensitised to it. I think the same may be true in a larger, societal sense too.
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Not sure on English TV, but on both Spanish TV and YouTube, I am still getting ads about how Trump is going to make the country great again. These alternate with a truly horrible ad from ICE/HS saying they are coming for immigrants that I cannot believe is official government material.
The absolute sorest winner ever.
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Whatever you grow up with is the benchmark for “normal”.
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Very true.
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I commented on this photo on reddit, and someone replied with “spiderman wore a mask.” WTF.
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Some folks really believe that these are “bad guys” who deserve whatever they get. It’s fucking disgusting.
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And if you had a room full of Spider-Men against a single unarmed man, they might not be the heroes any more.
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(He starts out grim, but gets more optimistic…)
He invokes the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to remove unauthorized immigrants, without evidence or hearing.
Sides with Russia, China, and North Korea against Ukraine.
Purges career officials and installs political hacks more loyal to him than to the United States. Fires inspectors general. Demotes senior prosecutors.
Threatens law firms that represented people he considers his personal enemies.
Pardons the hoodlums who attacked the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021.
He and Musk mow down wide swathes of our government.
Republican lawmakers, fearful or unprincipled, say and do nothing.
Democrats are in disarray. Chuck Schumer green lights a continuing budget resolution that allows Musk and Trump to close down even more of our government.
And on it goes.
You have every right to feel depressed and enervated. You have every reason to despair.
But wait.
It’s possible that future generations will look back on this scourge and see something else — not just what was destroyed but also what was born.
Even prior to Trump, our democracy was deeply flawed. The moneyed interests were drowning out everyone else. Inequality was reaching record levels. Corruption — legalized bribery through campaign contributions — was the political norm (Musk is the logical ending point). The bottom 90 percent were getting nowhere because the system was rigged against them.
It’s entirely possible that future generations will look back on this awful time and see the seeds of fundamental reform.
Many of you are leading this. In hundreds of thousands of ways, you are beacon lights. You are the beginnings of positive change.
Whether it’s your appearances at Republican town halls, or your phone calls that are daily jamming the Capitol and White House switchboards, or your mountains of emails and letters, or your myriad actions protecting the vulnerable in your communities, or your grass-roots activism in Wisconsin and elsewhere: You are the groundswell of America’s new resistance, the green shoots of our future democracy.
The backlash to Trump is growing. His disapproval ratings have jumped nearly 10 points since he was sworn in. People are flooding meetings and rallies, demanding an end to Trump and Musk’s reign. Bernie, AOC, and other progressive politicians are drawing huge crowds.
These are terrible times — the worst I’ve lived through, and I’ve lived through some bad ones. (Remember 1968? Nixon’s enemies list? Anyone old enough to recall Joe McCarthy’s communist witch hunts?)
But as long as we are alive, as long as we are resolved, as long as we are taking action to stop the worst of this, as long as we are trying to make America and the world even a bit better — have no doubt: We will triumph.
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Paul Lynch’s Prophet Song touches on this. The world doesn’t end all at once like in the blockbuster disaster movies, it end for people, and cities, and countries little by little. Vox, I feel was pointing out that for the privileged, it won’t be noticed.
The ending of the world is, in fact, a recurring event, and that “the prophet sings not of the end of the world, but of what has been done and what will be done and what is being done to some but not others, that the world is always ending over and over again in one place but not another and that the end of the world is always a local event, it comes to your country and visits your town and knocks on the door of your house and becomes to others but some distant warning, a brief report on the news” - Paul Lynch.
PS. Prophet Song won the 2023 Booker Award. Highly recommended, IMO.
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Oh yeah, I’ve had about 20 replies from people telling me the guards have to hide their faces to protect them and their families from the cartels. And I’m just like….the state created this war on drugs that created the cartels, and your excuses for the guards sounds like people excusing Nazi soldiers because they were “just following orders.” It’s depressing how many people just accept the official propaganda.
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Yeah, it really is… All I see in these shots are just pointless cruelty masquerading as toughness. It doesn’t help that I just got done reading that history of concentration camps, either. People just keep justifying this shit, for the dumbest of reasons, and no one comes out better on the other side…
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I’m pretty sure the cartels don’t give a shit about detainees unlawfully incarcerated there by the U.S.
Doesn’t effect their business at all.
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Agreed, but the guards dragging people away without due process? They’re the real victims here! /s
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Well, that’s one suggestion.
Another one is from
Canadian science fiction writer, tech journalist, and friend of Gizmodo Cory Doctorow had a great suggestion last month that would put incredible pressure on the U.S. “What if Canada stopped upholding U.S. tech companies’ intellectual property?” He asked in a paper for the Canada Centre for Policy Alternatives.
American tech companies charge a lot of rent. Most app stores run by Amazon, Apple, or Google skim 30% off every transaction. John Deere farming equipment is hard to repair without paying the company for expensive software unlocks. Car companies, and especially Tesla, lock basic features behind electronic paywalls.
Doctorow’s suggestion is that Canada not impose tariffs on U.S. goods but go back through its trade negotiations with America and “tear up these laws” that it agreed to regarding big tech’s IP.
[…]
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Not this time. If you add up everyone who is not-male, not-white, not the ‘right’ kind of Christian, disabled, plus LGBTQIA+ (the smallest group, which is why it’s being targeted early), that’s actually the bulk of the population.
Indiana is going to be much harder hit by the loss of disability protections and support than Chicago, for example. At some point, even MAGA voters are going to notice.
But we don’t wait for them. They can catch up.
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Minnesota republicans have a plan to help people with the cost of groceries in their state.
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Did the Nazis ever have “doesn’t love the Führer” as a mental illness, or is this a bold new innovation in licking boots?
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I’m halfway through Ravensbrück by Sarah Helm. Next up is Masha Gessen’s Surviving Autocracy.
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