I mean, I’m American and if I had to pick one, we’re definitely that latter. It’s just that I grew up here, so it’s more readily apparent to me that the conservatives who screamed about muh guns muh constitution were always operating in bad faith. Kinda like how the conservatives you guys are about to elect are operating in bad faith when they talk about how very worried they are about immigration.
It’s fundamentally understood that the republic is dead, and neither peaceful protest nor normal legislative or judicial processes will work on the Trump administration. It doesn’t help that pushing the opposition party to do anything has led them to bitch and whinge about how they’re being bullied by their constituents. All that’s left to us now is submission, balkanization, and/or violence. Most people are still trying to get a read of the room and aren’t ready to throw down their lives yet. For my part, I’m supporting a California Secession initiative.
Get ready to ride in the bicycle gutter and get yelled at by drivers for, like, existing.
There is, which is why the bungalow owners bitch endlessly about the skyscrapers ruining the view [of the 12 lane interstate]
I’m going to offer what support I can to the California Secession initiative. Balkanization could break the power of the federal government and probably meaningfully improve things for folks across the country by finally allowing for long-delayed political reforms.
My guess is that the first bad report will be accurate, but once this administration gets caught with their pants down, they’ll fire that team and start releasing jobs reports that have been sharpied to death.
Let me speak from experience that there is no such thing as an ironic Nazi. Every single “bro, it’s just a joke lol” is followed by a silent “…unless?”
Uncritical support for this.
The AI image really sends the fucking campiness. It’s hard to imagine that fucking bozo even living to a third term. I’m honestly surprised he hasn’t got sniped by atherosclerosis yet.
Look, cards on the table, shit IS scary. We’ve got an intelligence apparatus that has every message every one of us has ever sent electronically, and probably microphone data from every Internet connected device we’ve ever been in earshot of, so organizing something a little more potent has to happen nearly spontaneously. You’re dreaming if you think our operatives (or cops for that matter) are above just throwing a bag over your head, breaking your legs and throwing you down a mineshaft. Those intelligence agencies, for most of a century, have been spearheaded by the kind of people that sponsored violent right wing reactionary movements around the world to depose peaceful communist/leftist regimes you’ve maybe never heard of. They’d gladly take this over someone even as far left as Sanders.
Half the country still thinks that everything happening is perfectly cool and normal and totally how a republic works. A lot of the people in power still aren’t convinced that Trump won’t wake up one day and just be normal; they come to each new day of horrors completely shocked and surprised that he continued to be what he said he would, and to suggest that we should maybe do something about that is scandalous to them. Those two things together mean that the meaningful support is not great. Being a lone gunman is unlikely to change much, given that MAGA is a movement, and others around Trump- the people who hand him the EOs, and the billionaires who sponsor them- will remain. Being an armed resistance is effectively a death sentence, and nobody’s quite ready to sign up for that, at least until it’s absolutely clear that the alternative to fighting is just as bad. If I go rogue and catch a bullet, nobody’s going to take care of my family, they’re going to be homeless until RFK sends them off to a camp. Plus, as others have mentioned, it’s pretty goddamn difficult to organize mass protests in DC when everyone who feels like you do is living dollar store hot dog to dollar store hot dog and DC is further from you than Moscow is from London.
For as long as I’ve been alive, the consistent message to the American people has been that help is not coming. The cops will gladly form a task force to come shoot your grandma in her living room, but routinely have argued that they have no duty to protect you. When the BLM protests were happening, a bunch of my coworkers cheered and giggled at videos of cops doing drive by pepper spraying of people who were just walking, and derided that dude (I think it was in Seattle?) who returned fire when the cops shot at him first. When the great recession happened, our government spent a trillion dollars bailing out banks instead of people. If you need assistance, you’re ruthlessly scrutinized and continuously presumed to be a criminal or a parasite, only to be given not nearly enough at the end of it. Not only that, but we’ve even been attacking the helpers. We’ve spent decades eroding the ability to join a union, eroding the efficacy of unions, fighting and propagandizing against them at every turn (it doesn’t help that I’ve had my fair share of experience with worthless unions where the rep wouldn’t even return your calls. I know more people who’ve had experience with weak ass unions than people who’ve had experience with unions that are prepared to bury your boss under a sports stadium). We’re shutting down churches that house the homeless, arresting people who try to feed them, and our authorities have the goddamn audacity to frame that and bulldozing encampments as acts of “compassion” because to not make the homeless miserable is to enable them. Every one fundamentally understands that help is not coming, we must help ourselves, and this is a really, really, really big job for an individual.
So, yeah, I’d say I’m pretty goddamn scared and I feel rational to be so.
The only thing that makes real sense, imo, is to start laying the groundwork for cold balkanization. It will break the federal government’s power, finally allow needed social, legal, and economic changes, and hopefully can be achieved without much bloodshed.
Tbh, a lot of the suck comes from zoning codes and car centric design. Here, watch this kickflip: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJp5q-R0lZ0_FCUbeVWK6OGLN69ehUTVa
The cool thing is that, unlike economic systems, zoning codes are actually pretty easy to change. Your city council is in charge of that, and consistent, specific, and deliberate political pressure can still produce results at the local level. Right now, the only people showing up are the NIMBYs. We need people like you who want better cities to show up and demand them.
These aren’t contradictory. If you build up instead of out, it’s easier to save green spaces and make sure that they’re accessible. If you keep cars off the road with good public transit, less green spaces need to get paved to make ugly ass parking lots, you get fewer shitty drive throughs, you get more walkable spaces and small businesses instead of big box marts, and everything is generally less polluted and shitty.
The problem comes when everyone wants their own little slice of private green space (that is, suburbia). You eventually end up in a single family home desert with a 5 sqft yard and some fucking dork with too much time on their hands coming along to measure your grass with a ruler and bitching at you about how your car doesn’t look as nice as your neighbors’, and how it’s ruining the character of the neighborhood. Meanwhile you look over Steven’s shoulder and it occurs to you again how every house looks exactly the same, everything is artificial and sanitized looking, like you live in a CGI scene from the late 90s. How long has it been since you’ve seen a bird? Kids playing outside? When was the last time you wanted to go outside? The last time your kids wanted to go out? You got them a bike, but they never bothered to learn to ride it, it’s quietly rusting away in a corner of the garage. You tried taking it yourself one time and got yelled at by someone in the neighborhood after they almost ran you over while driving recklessly (and maybe drunk). Actually, isn’t there some insect apocalypse happening right now? Come to think of it, when was the last time you saw a ladybug or a butterfly? This all feels wrong. You tried to find the little dipper to show it to your kids a few weeks ago, but you couldn’t find it at all. You definitely remember seeing more stars as a kid. Maybe you should just refuse to cut the postage stamp lawn and let the tickets pile up, you’ll go into the woods and live off mushrooms, become a witch, and come back and terrorize your neighbors and grow trees in their living rooms. Where did that come from? Haha. Anyway, you don’t even know your other neighbors even though you’ve lived here for years. It’d be cool if there was some reason to run into them, like a shop or cafe down on the corner or something, but that doesn’t exist and you don’t want to bother anyone. You “oh, yeah, sorry” as Steven chides you to stop putting the garbage out the night before the garbage truck runs, and then bid him a nice day, even if you don’t mean it. No, Steven, I can’t go to your church this weekend. I’m, uh, busy.
Okay, now, let’s pull back and frame everything you just said in the context of what I asked earlier:
If they CAN go anywhere else, why are they being held in Panama? Those people were here, they’re our problem, we’re the ones detaining them under our laws, so it’s our responsibility to treat them humanely. It’s decidedly not Panama’s problem, and I somehow doubt Panama is doing this without some arm twisting on our part. So, even if Panama decides “ah, well, fuck it, just kill em I guess”, that’s still on us.
Suffice it to say:
I’m deeply skeptical of this whole “oh, they’re just innocent lil camps outside of our own borders and laws where the media can’t easily check, why are you suspicious lmao?” narrative.
I’m also of the belief that people should live and work where they please, and that national borders are the tools of oppressors.
I mean that:
These kinds of operations always end up scooping up actual US citizens. That’s what happens when you break a few eggs to make an omelette.
The countries of origin might either not be known (in the case of someone in the country since they were a small child) or might not recognize them as a citizen for a variety of reasons, including paperwork cock-ups.
The country of origin might refuse to repatriate the person, because you can’t just dump a shitload of people on a poor country all at once and expect no consequences. It takes time to ramp up supply chains in response to demand. And before you say “Ah Ha! So you ARE against immigration!” No, immigration has largely been at a pace that the US could easily absorb, especially if we had sensible policies around how we build cities. If we actually do deport 11 million people in the first year, there’s going to be consequences for that. You don’t just take 11 million people worth of demand and economic production out of an economy virtually overnight and not have consequences. This whole thing is honestly like when a cartoon character sticks a shotgun in a hole and ends up blowing their own ass off. That’s us right now.
As for the camps being an improvement, I’m sure it’s more convenient for the Trump administration, but absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. You should always, always have a healthy doubt of the government.
I doubt they’re getting their needs met. In Trump 1, they tried to argue that they shouldn’t have to provide soap or lights that turn off at night in the detainment centers.
Also, take some time to critically examine your thoughts about national borders. Most people just want to live and work and mind their own business. We allow unfettered migration between the states and there’s no problem there; people move between states, find work, and mind their own business. That’s also true of the overwhelming majority of illegal immigrants, only we set up a bullshit system designed to provide an underclass of labor for exploitation, and now some folks are arguing in bad faith that they’re cleverly defending immigrants from exploitation by (checks notes) detaining and deporting them instead of attacking the bullshit exploitation system we created.
That’s kind of tangential to the point I’m making. I’m trying to say that I don’t think these people can be legitimately returned. Making them another state’s problem is a way to make it out of sight, out of mind, and make it hard for people to protest. Last time, under Trump 1, there was a lot of (rightful) fuss about the detainment camps and how the Trump administration argued that they shouldn’t be required to provide blankets, soap, and lights that turn off at night. No need to be too concerned with any of those details if it’s happening half a world away, see?
This whole thing is infringing on dignity. Nothing about this is about dignity. There is nothing dignified in being treated as a prisoner, and they are not free to go.
Why is panama taking them in the first place if there was somewhere else for them to go?
That… Is a really good idea! I’m going to put that in my pipe and smoke it