Tale as old as time. The abused grow up to become the abusers.

Yeah, whenever i see someone here saying that we need to resort to violence, my immediate thought is always, “Ok tough guy, where’s your truck bomb?”

I do more IRL resistance work than at least 95% of the people on this site. And I’m not even talking protests. I’m directly, on the ground, working to help some of the people most hurt by the regime’s policies. I’m not into violence, but I’m not above disobeying unjust laws either. So it’s not like I’m some online slactavist that refuses to lift a finger to actually help people. The kind of work I do is the kind of thing I can’t even post about on social media.

But it is an incredible shame how the right has taken over so many online spaces. 10-15 years ago, the left more dominated online spaces. The early internet was a mix of very libertarian and progressive. Hell the internet was built from the ground up on socialist principles. But it’s the right that really learned how to use the net most effectively as a means of mass communication and propaganda. And they did so quite deliberately. There was a deliberate and organized campaign among white supremacists on places like stormfront to subtly move their message to the mainstream.

I think those on the left tend to view things from way too scholarly a perspective. Why repeat the same message if you’ve already written extensively about it before? Or make sure to not post simple understandable messages; instead start with a dozen qualifiers and provisos that end up watering down your whole message. It’s more important to be intellectually rigorous than it is to effectively communicate your values. Or there’s the tendency for purity tests that end up shoving away otherwise eager allies.

The right meanwhile has learned that even bold faced lies can become widely accepted if you simply repeat them loudly and often enough.

Yes, obviously, but these type of comments are self-defeating and unhelpful. It’s more about trying to encourage the circulation of the idea that ICE needs to face criminal accountability. There should be a paragraph on ICE’s potential criminal liability in every article about them. People should mention their susceptibility to prosecution on every discussion about them. We should be including the topic of prosecutions in every casual conversation about ICE.

The right wing learned a long time ago that the public narrative matters. If there’s an idea worth spreading, then spread it. We need to get the idea of accountability in the public consciousness whenever possible. Otherwise, it’s the default instinct of every Democratic politician to try to be magnanimous when they’re elected. Liberals are by their nature non-confrontational; they’re happy to have people walk all over them. Obama and Biden both refused to prosecute the previous administration and tried to be grand peace makers, and look how that turned out. It will take a lot of public pressure if there’s ever going to be any accountability. That’s why we need to be circulating these ideas in the Zeitgeist. Yes, obviously this is just lemmy, but there’s no need to be such an unhelpful cynic.

The problem is that Microsoft doesn’t honor your wishes. There is no button you can click that says, “opt me out of all AI and cloud data features.” You can disable apps, buttons, and tracking today, but there will be new ones out tomorrow. And there may be a period of weeks or months of them sucking your data up before you figure out what they’re tracking and how to shut it down.

Daily reminder to all ICE agents. By signing up for ICE, you have signed yourself up for a lifetime of fear and criminal liability. There are Nazi concentration camp guards that were tried for their crimes in their 90s. There is no statute of limitations on crimes against humanity. Your names are recorded; your deeds are known. And you will face justice for your crimes. And do not count on a blanket pardon saving you. Crimes against humanity are violations of international law that cannot be pardoned.

To drive her point home, as penance, she should immolate herself on the steps of the US House. Until she does that, ignore her like the liar she is.

Himmler.

As a reminder, the only people who conflate anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism are raging anti-Semites. They hold the Hitlerian belief that to be Jewish is to owe allegiance from birth to Israel. They don’t believe Jews can truly be real Americans, or citizens of any country except Israel. Schumer believes in the old Nazi belief that Jews are, by nature of their birth, foreigners in every country except Israel. This is why they believe any criticism of Israel is an attack on Jews everywhere, because they believe that Jewish people cannot be truly American. They are always suspect. They’ll always have dual loyalty. Schumer is a raging anti-Semite.

It need not even be over permanently. Many nations have come together, broken apart, just to come back together again in the future. Look at how many times China has gone through that cycle. Look at German dissolution and reunification. I imagine some time apart would do the nation and its various political factions a lot of good. And probably in a generation or two, a movement would likely develop to try to bring things back together again. The idea of united America isn’t going anywhere. But our present form of government just isn’t what is needed to produce that unity. The Constitution is a collection of compromises meant to satisfy the needs of the 1780s. Perhaps in the 2080s, a new attempt can be made, a new set of compromises forged, and the nation rebuilt. If nothing else, an EU-style customs and open boarder union between the states would likely be implemented even from the time of first dissolution.

No, none of this is possible because it violates supremacy law in every way imaginable (unfortunately).

So? The Constitution is dead. Stop fellating its corpse.

We need to just ignore the Supreme Court entirely. They’re a fundamentally illegitimate institution. Their opinions are worth less than soiled toilet paper. Ignore them.

Then the solution is for the blue states to establish their own banking systems that the fed has no control or influence over. When a court tells the California bank to transfer money, they’ll just send that email to the trash folder.

No. Canada is a small country and can’t actually absorb the millions of people that acquiring US states would entail. California alone has a population similar to that of all of Canada. The US West Coast, if it joined Canada, would suddenly represent the majority of the Canadian population. Canada could absorb a single low population state, like Alaska. But asking Canadians to absorb large chunks of the US is asking them to make existing Canadians a political minority in their own country. Is doesn’t make sense. The US West Coast can simply be its own independent country.

Honestly, we need to dissolve the union at this point. It’s just common sense.

Look, it’s time for a reality check. When a nation’s political culture becomes this dysfunctional, there’s no bringing it back, not without some massive bloody civil war that leaves millions dead. What they don’t teach you in school is that every written law or constitution is ultimately meaningless. The Constitution does not enforce itself and neither does any law. They all require a certain amount of good-faith interpretation. It is always possible to come up with a strained bad-faith interpretation of any law that will allow you to do whatever you want. But in a healthy political system, this doesn’t happen. Both sides practice restraint and realize that their overreach will be answered by overreach on the other side.

But if you lose that? The nation is effectively shattered. The United States, as a functioning democracy, is already dead. It’s zombie corpse is just limping along. The president is openly defying the laws passed by Congress. The Supreme Court is openly corrupt, openly partisan, and ignoring the plain language of the constitution. It’s all just might makes right now, and both parties view the other as fundamentally wicked and illegitimate.

Once your politics have decayed this much, there is no bringing it back. We need to peacefully dissolve the United States. Will it be easy? No. But we also shouldn’t let one of our core national character flaws - American exceptionalism, blind us to the possibilities that exist. Plenty of nations have peacefully dissolved before. And they find ways to negotiate the hard issues like dividing assets, debts, obligations, military forces, etc. This has been done before, and it can be done again.

When this comes up, the “umm aktually” crowd also comes out of the woodwork. They’ll point out that there’s no actual constitutional mechanism to do this. These people are blind or have been asleep the last six months. You would think they would learn by now that all it takes to do something is that there not be anyone there to stop you.

We should grant all 50 states full independence. Just disband the existing federal government entirely. Let the states then come back together in whatever new nation or nations they want to form. How can this be done legally? Simple. Someone just needs to run for president on the platform of national dissolution, saying, “I’ll grant all 50 states independence. I’ll fire every federal employee, and I will not use any military force to stop all the states from seceding.” And then they get elected and simply do that. Congress or SCOTUS can complain all they want; it won’t matter. That candidate if elected would have an overwhelming political mandate, and there would be no way to stop them. Some may whine that it’s unconstitutional, but who cares? It’s pretty obvious by now that the Constitution is broken, obsolete, and no longer worth respecting. We’re walking away from that broken obsolete piece of trash. We can do better.

I just remove my upper layer of skin whenever it gets too hot.

They’re going after the wrong people. They should be disappearing Republican politicians, accusing them of secretly being illegal aliens.

People need to start kidnapping and disappearing:

1. Conservative white Republicans.

2. Evangelical preachers.

3. ICE agents.

4. Police officers.

5. Republican politicians.

Just dress up as ICE, bust down their doors, and haul them off. If they try to show a birth certificate or passport, grab it from them, tear it in half, and call it a fake.

White Christian conservatives need to learn that they will not come out of this unscathed. They need to know that they are just as vulnerable as anyone else, and that they themselves are a minority group in this country. We need to put the fear of God in these bastards. That’s the only way this will ever end.

There is one question every single Democratic lawmaker needs to be asked:

“What should Democrats do with the newly expanded powers of the presidency?”

If they cannot answer that question, they need to be primaried, as they are not fit for this moment.

Well I’m calling for Andy Ogles to be hanged for treason.

They literally mentioned gerrymandering, you fucking troll.