Remember the meltdown over “Obamaphones”?

Thats how Bowling for Columbine presented it as well.

I don’t think it’s controversial to see a direct line of descent from militia -> slave patrols -> police.

As a trans and possibly autistic New Vegas fan, I resemble that remark.

I think trying to police strict categories though is a problem - reality doesn’t fit genre. People don’t fit genre. My Bejeweled loving grandmother got hella into the newer Civilization games, my FIFA addicted ex would dabble into furry romance games.

Even within the same game, there’s vast differences in how people can approach gameplay - I play the Sims for fucked up historical roleplay. Other people use it as a wish fulfillment vehicle where their self insert characters live their dream lives - others cheat to give themselves lots of money and just build gorgeous houses.

Video games are a combination of art and toys. There’s no “right way” to appreciate art, and no one likes when someone else tells you how to play with your toys. Thomas Kinkade paintings makes me want to vomit, while Cy Twombly paintings intoxicate me - others will not have the same reaction, and that’s part of the beauty that makes us human.

(How on earth can human beings listen to Sargon for more than 15 minutes? Even the clips I’ve heard excerpted in Hbomberguy etc make me want to claw my ears out lol)

That kind of categorization just seems to lead to a kind of elitism. (Victoria 2 players are of course the most elite gamers)

I think it’s time to recognize that “video game” is a medium. Being a “gamer” is the same as being a “reader” or “someone who likes watching movies.” Specifying genre is what might make things more clear.

Like I’m a “gamer” that plays mostly obscure indie art games, isometric CRPGs, Bethesda RPGs, and will try an FPS/adventure game if the story looks compelling enough. I’m not the same kind of “gamer” as someone who plays the Ubisoft releases, or sports games, or hero shooters.

Like ultimately all of this is shit we do for fun - why do we need to categorize and judge people?

I think a big difference between then and now might be the lack of community organizations.

When I look at US history pre-1980 or so, it seems like there were a lot more little clubs and organizations. Things like Kiwanis or Lions Club would be sort of backbones of the community (also involved in one’s route to political success - my grandpa’s plan before his mysterious/very controversial death was military -> lead the Kiwanis -> get into politics), or even tiny ass small towns might have a organizations for the local immigrant populations - like Krebs, OK used to have an Italian organization large enough to do parades.

These organizations would provide support to their members. They’d do fundraisers for the sick, they’d organize meal trains. Unions also did a lot of that.

(The second Klan, ie 1920s, was primarily one of these types of social organizations. Some folks joined for the baseball matches and parades).

Like keep in mind most of us are a paycheck or two away from eviction. And once you drop out of the system it’s difficult to get back in. We don’t have support networks (even the way the nuclear family atomizes individuals - parents aren’t expected to support you after 18). Those were support networks that could step in if you lost your job after an unfair imprisonment or if you needed to find someone to babysit during a rally.

Also goes with the lack of third spaces - these kinds of meetings or events were places to meet others in the flesh. I think the political discussion of a chautauqua was probably less vulnerable to foreign bad agents (although certainly not domestic ones).

We just have a lack of community in general - I guess a “lack of class consciousness” ensues. We view our struggles against our landlord/boss/grocery stores as individual and still somewhat of our own fault, that we are still “temporarily embarrassed millionaires” who haven’t worked hard enough to earn it yet.

I’ve known (rich) people who think people without health insurance who can’t afford their treatment deserve to die. When you don’t know poor people, they aren’t human to you. When you don’t know other people, their struggles don’t matter.

We’re too exhausted from working to socialize, organize or really being able to give a shit about anything.

Yeah - there are a shit ton of Joker’s epic boners.

Also a lot of funny stuff with Superman and Jimmy Olsen. The Bronze Age is… something.

DRMless digital is great - I have a calibre library of thousands - but still more vulnerable.

Canticle of Lebowitz is a great post apocalyptic novel. After the nukes, Catholic monasteries preserve the ancient tradition of copying down manuscripts. Text doesn’t require any form of infrastructure.

There are also many texts/other media that are not available in any digital format. Obscure or older. For as much of an Information Age we are in, a lot of knowledge is being lost through neglect.

The best true crime podcast will always be Criminal. Very little sex/murder, more like a This American Life for crime.

I think in part it’s hyper vigilance and some bits of “Just World” falllacy. When you are raised female, you’re constantly taught shit like always keeping a key ready between your knuckles when you’re walking outside at night, or where best to kick someone, or the debates on whether to shout “help” or something else - to be female is to be taught you are in danger. My mom was fucked up but the shit where she would obsessively show me where all the sex criminals in our neighborhood were wasn’t maybe that unusual.

The “Just World” aspect is maybe if you learn enough you can protect yourself. Listen to enough true crime podcasts and you’ll crack the pattern and protect yourself. Look at all the weird women on Facebook who post about their “close calls” with human trafficking - or even how police departments will feed into that shit.

Then perhaps a more complicated aspect - the most awful crimes are committed by those closest to us. Stranger danger is very appealing as an alternative.

Historically, it was open borders - as long as you had the correct skin color.

Ellis Island didn’t send anyone away - unless they had like TB or something.

In the 50’s - many Mexican Americans who were legally citizens were deported in “Operation Wetback.” Based on skin color/appearance - which matches with the reports of what ICE is doing now harassing Native Americans.

It’s never been about following rules, it’s always been about being the right kind of person

It was fun, but vim ultimately made more sense and is what I used for note taking most of the time now.

There’s a reason why the US refused to ratify the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.

Seeing the way DHS and foster works has been a “black pill” for me. There’s a wider attitude that children are the property of their parents in their states (see the endless conversations about “parent rights” - eg, denying children education and medical care). Children whose parents have rejected them are basically dumped into a lost and found, have no value, have no voice.

I’ve talked to social workers where they had to place kids in homeless shelters because there were no available beds. Kids sleep in DHS offices. DHS can’t be assed to make sure kids’ shit gets from place to place - I’ve bought multiple children clothes because they went inpatient with basically nothing.

At one point in college I decided to make myself take notes in ed for a semester for the lulz

Amazon’s ebook store front (as well as the internet in general) is flooded with AI slop. The internet is a place where the signal to noise ratio is dropping rapidly.

Physical media is necessary. Especially books. Especially the kinds of books regimes might want to ban. When it’s time to rebuild, we’ll need firm ground to stand on, and physical books work as long as you can hold them.

Well yeah, that’s kind of the problem right now isn’t it? It actually doesn’t matter what the Constitution says, because the current Supreme Court is a partisan organ that exists to rubber stamp everything Trump whatever Trump does.

In New York City neighborhoods, organized bands of Jewish housewives fiercely resisted eviction, arguing that they were merely doing their jobs by defending their homes and those of their neighbors. Barricading themselves in apartments, they made speeches from tenement windows, wielded kettles of boiling water, and threatened to scald anyone who attempted to move furniture out on to the street. Black mothers in Cleveland, unable to convince a local power company to delay shutting off electricity in the homes of families who had not paid their bills, won restoration of power after they hung wet laundry over every utility line in the neighborhood. They also left crying babies on the desks of caseworkers at the Cleveland Emergency Relief Association, refusing to retrieve them until free milk had been provided for each child. These actions reflected a sense of humor but sometimes housewife rage exploded. In Chicago, angry Polish housewives doused thousands of pounds of meat with kerosene and set it on fire at the warehouses of the Armour Company to dramatize their belief that high prices were not the result of shortages.

Imagine what happens to foster kids who age out. Imagine applying for jobs at 17, knowing that you’ll need to support yourself, and then trying to figure out whether putting down the group home as your “permanent address” is a smart idea or not. (About a third of girls who age out end up pregnant quickly, another third will end up in sex work.)

Something like half of homeless people were in the foster care system. The foster care system in the United States is disgusting - group home positions are poorly paid and unpleasant, which incentivizes the wrong kind of people to want to work in them. “Troubled teens” are vulnerable to all kinds of extra abuse - look up what was happening with cops and kids at the Tulsa juvie last year.

These are people who have never been loved. People who were put through the meat grinder of the human soul that is DHS care, were thrown out on the street and told to figure it out.

People consider the homeless a public nuisance and ask for the police to remove them.

Basically, there are lot of areas that are technically owned by someone but not really maintained. Little patches of land near gas stations, etc. Or public places like parks or under underpasses. Slowly, you get tent cities that pop up and will be tolerated for a few months, until people start calling the police.

The police are supposed to warn people beforehand to clear out - we all know how much American cops respect procedure and humans rights of course. But after that warning is given, they’ll come through and trash everything. Identification documents, medications, personal photos - they don’t give a shit if they’re tossing out someone’s insulin. The ID being tossed can be especially devastating - if you lose all of you ID documents - how do you prove who you are to get new ones? This is a problem social workers/advocates deal with all the fucking time.

Except the part where there was NO militia when the amendment was conceived, written and passed.

The beginning of the United States military lies in local governments which created militias that enrolled nearly all free white men. The militia was not employed as a fighting force in major operations outside the local jurisdiction. Instead, the colony asked for (and paid) volunteers serving in ranger and other provincial troops (see above), many of whom were also militia members. The local Indian threat ended by 1725 in most places, after which the militia system was little used except for local ceremonial roles. The militia system was revived at the end of the colonial era, as the American Revolution approached; weapons were accumulated and intensive training began. The militia played a major fighting role in the Revolution, especially in expelling the British from Boston in 1776 and capturing the British invasion force at Saratoga in 1777. However most of the fighting was handled by the Continental Army, comprising regular soldiers.

Everyone, (well every male)

Not black men. Not “mulattos”. Not slaves. Which the funny thing is that gun regulations have been historically motivated by black folks getting guns - see how laws changed in response to the Panthers.

There’s a difference between a compulsory service in an organized regiment, where you presumably receive training on how to use said weapons, and “the founders wanted everyone to have the right to have anti aircraft rounds in their home.”

That is the current interpretation. Before Heller (2008) many scholars and federal courts supported the collective interpretation.

My point being that you are falsely treating this as a settled conversation/that the text is unambiguous. It’s famously unclear, and there have been pages and pages of arguments written about this.

The reason we can’t ban guns has to do with the 2nd Amendment, it guarantees gun ownership.

That’s questionable, and has been hotly debated for a long time.

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

It’s an entirely reasonable interpretation that this protects militias and not individual gun ownership.