How long will people be in denial that america is now a fascist regime? You all really going to wait until trumps third term until you come to terms with it, arent you?
It's not even new. They did this to people during 2020 protests. They drove up in mini vans jumped out, grabbed people and pulled them into the mini van and drove off.
There used to be footage of it but I haven't been able to find it. I think it was happening in Portland and Seattle. At the time there was live stream footage. And it usually happened later in the night as people were cooling off and dispersing.
America hasn't been what it preaches for half century at least.
The video snopes talks about I saw. Possibly even live streaming at the time because I was hooked on watching all that. Iirc it was a bronze gold colored minivan and the sliding door opened and 1 or two guys got out masked and just grabbed the person and pulled the protestor in and drove off.
Yep, this happened in Seattle and Portland multiple times, just basically black bagging people into unmarked vans by... presumably, plain clothes / "off duty" / half kitted out, face obscured, no visible ID cops.
They typically did this black bagging to people who had not actually broken any laws, but were so effective at keeping protester morale high, and/or were simply causing overwhelming masses of people to defend them from, in many cases, literally entirely unprovoked police assault/brutality.
Most of these were the people they wanted to removr but knew that no charges would actually stick because they had nothing, and then release them 24-72 hours later.
Sometimes they'd black bag / white van people who had actually crossed the threshold into doing something they could actually charge you for, but most of the time, nope.
I know that in Portland the cops actively decided to act as body guards for fascists, and look the other way when they attacked people.
In Seattle, ... the cops intentionally started so much shit, assaulting nonviolent people, well we uh... we literally forced them to abandon their major police office in Capitol Hill.
As in, we seiged them. Surrounded the building for days. Eventually they burned a bunch of records and made a stealthy withdrawal in the dead of night.
That police center is only a few blocks from where the 'CHAZ' would be set up.
Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone.
As in, we literally drove out the local police and are thus now autonomous.
... We've still never seen the all the actual communications between the police chief and mayor, other internal police records... because the police destroyed them. They destroyed them because they almost certainly outlined numerous violations of the law in terms of orders issued, tactics used, illegal arrests/detainments, bullshit 'overtime' overpayments and other financial shenanigans, crimes committed by the police and probably all the way up to the police chief and mayor engaging in a criminal conspiracy.
I was in Seattle during this. Word was people got snatched here but I don't recall seeing hard evidence myself. Portland though they for sure got caught kidnapping protesters
There were a bunch of theories the people they black bagged were undercover / plainclothes cops. Every video I saw were of younger white guys in good shape getting taken off the streets.
Yep, a higher percentage of Americans support trump than weimar republic Germans ever supported Hitler. Fascist don't have to engage in electoralism once they securely seize the power of the pulpit.
I'm done caring about America as a whole, I'm creating my mutual defense/support networks with friends and family and preparing for the worse. Democrats are still stuck in thirdway politics as the Reichstag burns to the ground.
The way Hitler took over with such a small support was by dividing the remaining citizens into smaller groups. Unity is our most powerful asset in resistance.
Trump has also failed to obtain abject loyalty of the military, which will prevent him from control by force.
Trump has also failed to obtain abject loyalty of the military, which will prevent him from control by force.
The problem is that also mimics hitler's ascent to totalitarian control. Even at the height of his power lots of career soldiers and especially sailors were never really ideologically aligned with Hitler. Unfortunately, at the end of the day people in the military follow orders.
That’s not accurate. Germany had a strict top-down chain of military command, hence the Nuremberg trials defense of “just following orders.” After the trials, the US military was redesigned with a break above the Commanding Officer. The CO must verify the legality and constitutionality of orders before giving orders to the troops, just as it’s the responsibility of the troops to refuse to follow illegal or unconstitutional orders. CO’s have the JAGs, or Judge Advocate General Corps, who are legal advisors at the CO’s disposal to ensure they have the resources needed to remain accountable to the law and Constitution.
That’s not accurate. Germany had a strict top-down chain of military command, hence the Nuremberg trials defense of “just following orders.”
The Nuremberg trials, like most international laws were an invention of convenience. If someone attempted to apply them to US action in a foreign intervention today, they would not be successful. In fact the US has stated that they would sooner invade a system like the ICC than allow them to prosecute anyone in the military.
After the trials, the US military was redesigned with a break above the Commanding Officer. The CO must verify the legality and constitutionality of orders before giving orders to the troops, just as it’s the responsibility of the troops to refuse to follow illegal or unconstitutional orders.
This may be a fact in doctrine, but in practice the military has historically has failed to fulfill this particular commitment. There have been several examples of US troops committing illegal actions commanded by officers without legal retribution.
You can refuse to follow orders you think are illegal, but more often than not it's a career ending action or punishable offense if not proven in court.....and military court is not exactly a non biased apparatus of justice.
This system depends on young soldiers with minimal educations and rights to stand up to a system that has an immencse amount of control over their lives. A system that has proven to defend higher command and officers in most cases, and to defend its overall image over anything.
Even higher commands ability to stand up to the commander in chief is limited, we can see this in the news today with active duty military members being deployed state side to conduct what is fairly obvious policing actions in LA and on the US border in a direct violation of posse comitatus.
My entire point was that the rules that are supposed to protect the general population are often interpreted to serve those in power. Posse Comitatus is supposed to negate the use of military members from being used for policing on US soil.
Meaning that the definition of policing is being semantically interpreted as "arresting people" when in reality policing is defined as prevention and detection of crime and the maintenance of public order.
What other purpose can the military be utilized against the general public other than to maintain public order?
First of all, the national guard are not active duty military personnel and can and are utilized in state policing actions. Secondly, laying down shields is not disobeying a direct order. Lastly we have historic examples of national guard members committing massacares against non violent protestors.
The US has not signed the Rome Statute, and is therefore not beholden to the laws of the ICC unless in a nation that has signed said agreement.
My point was that international law a kin to those laid down by the Nuremberg trials do not protect us from fascist utilizing the military against us.
Your claim was that we were granted protections via the establishment of the Nuremberg principals.....the Nuremberg principals are now moderated by the ICC via the 1999 Rome statute.
You are just proving my point for me. Internal laws are subject to interpretation via those who currently hold power (fascist), and external laws are inventions of convenience that we do not and have never allowed to truly moderate our countries behavior. My original claim stands, that we are not really in a much different scenario than in Hitler's Germany.
Yep, my faith in any established political party has been worn thin since the bush era. Right now I'm just working on teaching my LGBT friends how to maintain and shoot a rifle and how to properly stock a go bag.
And make sure you protest in ways the fascists approve of: no violence (the facists wouldn't like that) and make sure you're waving American flags (the fascists like to see American flags).
But remember you also gotta protest in ways the Dems would like too. So nothing too aggressive, and if your idea is anything less than perfect we should just not do it anyways.
(Actually we should protest like the French with fire bombs and guillotines)
You don't have to be the one being targeted to act against them. If I see gestapo going after someone, I'll make the call even though I don't fit the profile of who they're targeting today.
What is anyone supposed to do? All the checks and balances that are supposed to safeguard against this are non-functional, by choice. The only option is censored from even being mentioned and it means possibly fucking dying.
I thought that was the idea behind the second amendment
No, the idea was that a good militia is all you need to keep a country safe, and that a federal army is a tool for government oppression. That's what the writers saw all over Europe at the time, so they made sure the fix that in their new country.
Technically you only need one bullet. A lot of this support for Maga in the US hinges on just one guy. Who would replace him? There is no one who will gain as much traction. And remember: as long as dictators die, liberty will never perish.
Next in line is JD "Couchfucker" Vance, which is like Trump, but with more brains (and totally onboard with project 2025); and even if you get him too, the next in line is Christofascist Mike Johnson, who would probably go the shortest route to Gilead if both his predecessors got assassinated.
That's more shooting luck than anyone will ever get, even if the Secret Service didn't look too hot when Trump got shot at.
Trump WANTS that to happen. This is the desired outcome for him.
Trump wants people to not resist him at all. He's still trying to retaliate against places where the "No Kings" protests took place and those were completely peaceful.
This is the insidious thing about authoritarianism. Once they have power, they can crush any dissent no matter what the dissenters do.
Peaceful protest? Crush it. If it gains any actual traction, just pretend it’s violent to justify violent oppression. Facts don’t matter and words can casually justify any action, no matter how heinous.
But violent opposition? The authoritarians dream of this, because it’s justification to bring everything they have to bear with zero accountability or justification. And since they are in power, they will have much greater force at their disposal. This is why Americas founders originally opposed the very idea of a professional standing army.
Only moderated on reddit. The censorship is everywhere because we're being watched everywhere - if you post concrete plans on Lemmy, you'll get a knock on the door.
And if it turns out to be a cop or ice agent, can you be charged, imprisoned or legally killed for doing so? There are laws for declaring that you're an officer, that was a safeguard so people could reasonably defend themselves. How strongly is that being protected right now under Trump?
We aren't supposed to accept that law enforcement just does as it pleases, ignoring our civil rights and protections and donning standard identification markers so that each officer can be uniquely identified. But this is not all that new.
Most of the time we don't know we're being kidnapped by g-goons or the police are ignoring our rights until they're doing it, and we can only hope we get our day in court to challenge the arrest.
Since the development of DEA, the US courts have been carving out more and more exceptions to the fourth and fifth amendments of the Constitution of the United States, and by even the 90s (with some big thanks to RICO laws / rulings) we are no longer policed by consent, but by force, because there's no one around with more firepower to stop them.
This was only noticed by minorities, especially in the 1990s with the crackdowns against street gangs and feral youths. At that point we were seeing ur-fascism feature #8 ( The enemy is both too strong and too weak ) where street gangs are described as feral youths who can't be negotiated with, while the same gang is an international organized-crime syndicate.
Then the 9/11 attacks happened, and the PATRIOT act was signed, and DHS was formed, and we noticed that some Americans, typically Muslim Arab-Americans, but sometimes Persian-Americans, sometimes Sikhs...really anyone who looked too middle-eastern, got disappeared by LGMs (dudes who look like cops but without personal or department identification, sometimes without the yellow POLICE plates), and rendered abroad to black sites to get tortured. But much of the US overlooked it because we were sore about WTC1 and WTC2.
(some of us screamed like Cassandra that this was a big move towards fascist autocracy, but I digress)
When Obama took over FBI was searching hard for terrorists in US borders but couldn't find many, and had to invent some (Remember Kellyanne Conway's Bowling Green Massacre? In the actual Bowling Green event no-one died but two refugees were gaslighted by FBI with a budget into doing some inoffensive para-terrorist work, and entrapped into terrorism charges. They're still serving time.)
By then, our massive surveillance state was in operation and all of the US' internet traffic went through NSA, and when there were Islamist militants who were thinking about a plot to suicide bomb an American asset, we'd send a predator drone to literally burn his village down: the CIA drone program killed 50 civilians -- including grandmothers and children-- for every person-of-interest neutralized. We learned that while video games don't make kids violent, making real-world warfare like a video game still meant the operator squeezing the trigger got PTSD. US drone programs had a turnover rate about as bad as German einsatzgruppen (death squads who mass executed villages for betrayal or harboring Jews).
So in 2016 when Trump won, Cassandra over here screamed about the Obama administration disabling all the mass intelligence state and surveillance state assets before Trump could get a hold of them.
We got a break, as Trump pissed off CIA and the rest of the intelligence community, so they weren't talking for a while, but then, somehow, when he had a Heritage Foundation plan and staffers who knew what structures were in place, we elected him President of the United States for a second time. Even despite his insurrection charges (which were stalled until moot).
So yeah, the previous administrations, knowing this was going to be a problem gave the Trump regime is very own SS / Brownshirt secret police (who behave a lot like the Sicherheitsdienst under Reinhard Heydrich) complete with a concentration camp system that is overflowing due to purge quotas.
During the 2020 George Floyd protests, there was a move to abolish ICE who had been hunting undocumented folk and were sent in to brutalize the demonstrations, which only pissed off more Americans, and there was a movement to Abolish ICE (what was always just a paramilitary department to serve the will and interests of the current administration, id est, a secret police).
We are now suffering the consequences of having failed to follow through.
The recipe has been in play for over a decade, probably more. People can't stand up if they have nothing to stand on. Everyone is struggling. What the fuck is fascism if you have to concentrate on just surviving. That's the whole play. They give us just enough to get by so we can live with no time to think. It's not denial, it's an orchestrated structure. The system isn't flawed, it's working as intended
Add to that several decades of constant far right propaganda disguised as news, and a massive rightward shift of the Overton Window, and you end up with brainwashed citizens willing to cheer this shit on.
Add to that the systematic dismantling of our public education system to ensure that people don't have the historical and political context to understand the implications of any of it.
They (The Heritage Foundation and their ilk, I guess) really learned a lot of lessons from the Third Reich... This is the culmination of decades of work for these people, and it is working as designed for the most part.
It's a very difficult trap to escape from. If not impossible.
Generally people in America don’t get organized until there’s a disaster. That’s one of the lessons of the Great Depression/New Deal. Not the most optimal way to maintain democracy. It’s not really “maintenance” if you wait for the thing to break and then fix it.
That’s a pretty classic Marxist understanding of how class conflict actually happens. In response to a crisis a state can either adapt or fall into chaos if it can’t. That’s essentially what happened during the new deal era and the civil war respectively. Although arguably the external threats of WWII allowed the US to adapt rather than fall apart.
i hope so, but the people I'm referring to aren't leftists. they're the people who oppose any and all regulation and cite being able to defend against tyranny as the ostensible reason.
yet when this shit happens they're awfully quiet. because they're full of shit and fucking love tyranny.
I generally agree. I had one neighbor that always voted straight ticket and was a gun nut with a screw loose. Not a fan of tyranny though. I think losing his brother in Vietnam put a fire in his soul.
Is it legal in the US to shoot people who are trying to kidnap you?
I mean, anyone can go around claiming to be law enforcement or ICE or whatever, but with no badge or ID, how are people supposed to know that this isn't a gang trying to trafic them?
In vast majority of states there is a stand-your-ground law in place, which means you're explicitly allowed to use deadly force if you reasonably believe that you're defending yourself from a violent crime, and in minority there is a duty to retreat while outside of your home or workplace, which means that you still are allowed to use deadly force, but you have to try to retreat first, and only use force if you are reasonably sure that you can't run away.
Kidnapping by a group of people in plain clothes in an unmarked van is explicitly stated as an example of a case where use of deadly force is permitted by law.
According to law, it's a matter of law in most of the states, and matter of jury instructions in a limited number of states. In other words, it is explicitly a law.
It may not, but imo you do what you have to do to protect yourself against aggravated kidnapping, and then hope you/your lawyer can articulate how/why you did what you did later in court.
That's the joke though... the picture is from a sketch where one Nazi officer tells another that he's starting to worry that they're the baddies, after he realizes that their hats have skulls on them.
I am aware, yes, it’s just I’m completely out of patience for anything that sounds even remotely like the setup for “who could have seen this coming?!”
Like, the alarms have been blaring and nothing is being particularly well hidden and even right now there are way too many people who zero clue what’s going on at all.
The Gestapo could be hauling them away in cuffs and putting them away in camps and some will just go "why is this happening to me? there must be some mistake"
Anyone who is still on the fence is either only tuned into propaganda or is incapable of reasoning.
I wonder what chain of thought led you to this conclusion, which is very strange to me. But at the same time, I'm not willing to start some kind of futile quarell over this so.. well, have it your way and have a good day.
The op was saying americans are fascist so it makes sense the government is fascist. To claim the general populace is fascist will only get you in a shouting match of who the most fascist is. A distraction from what really matters, addressing the fascist regime occupying the white house.
How long? My guess is that masked unmarked people that don't even verbally identify themselves will be shot at (and killed?) by someone as they're walking down the street when law enforcement are attempting to take into custody. My guess is that this shooter will either be killed by the unmarked and masked law enforcement or that person will be arrested and charged.
This is the point when all of the "every day carry" gun folks (and there are a lot of these) will then be faced with the question when they could every use their gun to defend themselves and not be facing charges themselves through no fault of their own.
I think thats when it finally tips enough people into the category to be against trump's actions.
To avoid armed targets, they have been calling people into court hearings, then they drop charges which allows people to leave. On the way out of the courthouse feds will abduct them.
It's pretty brilliant. If people become too scared to show up to court, then they get a real judicial warrant which allows them forcibly go into homes.
I think the line between a liberal democracy and fascism is much blurrier than most people think. I suspect the transition from one to the other, going in either direction, is entirely dependent on how much internal forces threaten the ruling capitalist class.
Right now, I think the US is on the decline but hasn’t yet experienced a crisis which really threatens the power of the capitalist class. Fascists seeking power therefore need to manufacture crises in order to accumulate power. That’s where I think the US is at right now.
However, I’m not sure how well it will really work. Democratic state leaders are effectively demonstrating that the existing law enforcement structures are perfectly capable of violently cracking down on dissent. So if you’re a wealthy capitalist, why would you push your bought and paid for judges and politicians to make Trump president for life? It seems like a needlessly risky move in my opinion.
That said, we can only say that the rich will operate rationally to protect their own interests on average. Individually, they can be wildly erratic like Elon Musk has proven to be. As such, the more wealth is concentrated into fewer and fewer hands, the less predictable the outcomes are.
True, fascism is the ultimate weapon that capitalists use in reaction to labor movements and class consciousness gaining strength. In fact, I’d argue that given modern advances in communication technology, which allow people to communicate and organize easier than ever, a fascist swing was almost inevitable.
It’s a shame that western world leaders don’t like dialectic materialism. We might have identified the problem before it seized power.
Who’s the rest of us? As far as I can tell, there isn’t anybody actually doing shit. Well, maybe one or two people. And a misguided and toothless protest isn’t going to achieve anything, no matter how many people show up. I hope you find your rest of us before it’s too late.
The top 10% with an absolute absurd amount of the wealth are the ones that don't care. Their miney, therefore their lifestyle seems safe.
The poorest idiots care deeply but think Trump is on their side and will come down to sweep them up right before it gets really miserable cause he needs to break standards of living for all the rich for them to rise up.
What will get people to finally pivot is unknowable. It will be when there is nothing left to lose, probably. If that ever happens without help from the outside, I dunno. It's not like Germans could Stop Germany from the inside or Japan it's fascism, or any other group.
But I think it's wrong to say the average American doesn't care. The over represented, as always, dont care, which includes out government. The average American agrees deeply we just don't have much power and all disagree on the solution.
The guys so old, I'm not sure hell make it through this term. He's clearly not well, but that's what makes this all crazier. Dems at least knew to kick out their senile old man, how the Republicans are okay with this is wild.
They’re okay with it bc Trump has a cult and many of his cult members are the ones voting the other republicans into office. If they kick out trump, they kick out a bunch of their voter base. Because unfortunately there’s a larger amount of non-cultist republicans that will still vote republican but just not for trump bc “there’s a difference” between the guy doing the bad things and all his best friends “begrudging” helping him do the bad things apparently. Basically they’re delusional about how politics actually work
Before we elected Trump, the fascism was still nascent. Ur-Fascism as Eco called it.
It's dishonest to pretend that this is the same level of fascism that we've been experiencing for decades. It's not. Trump and the Heritage Foundation kicked it into overdrive.
Pull ICE masks, I would let them shoot me just to protect the person they're abducting, fckn nazi's, u wanna shoot an american citizen and make me a martyr? be my guest and see what'll happen
Thanks. Since moving from Reddit to Lemmy, I've become way more aware of what I'm clicking on. I'm pretty sure the amp project links are just for mobile phones n stuff, but it's good to be aware
It happened during the Obama administration but it was in response to shit under Bush from people being critical of him/his admin. Obama did not support Citizens United.
Both in a vacuum and in an atmosphere, if you call something fascism because of one bad law, you're doing nothing but deminishing and watering down the term. It means something, you know.
You always like to claim people say that, but no one ever says that. They said they wouldnt vote for anyone in any party who supports genocide. You twist it around to be the words you prefer. I call that lying, but to each their own.
If Musk sets up his own party that would split the conservative vote so the Republicans would finally be open to ranked choice. Would probably require ⅔ majority in Congress.
But Dems might be too hungry for temporary power to support such a much needed fix.
Maybe you mean Multi Member Proportional voting like NZ and DE. That is the best system but complicated. US cannot even deal with converting to metric so MMP would result in exploding heads.
Yes, that was what I was going for. The really big issue with FPTP systems, especially hard ones like the US is that they create two-party systems which are incredibly undemocratic.
Third parties just can't exist, because they split the vote for your side, so the only choice you have if you are unhappy with your party is to not vote or vote for the other party, and all that does is benefit that other party you'd be even more unhappy with.
You know, kinda like one might think Harris isn't left enough, so they end up helping Trump to power.
But what's even worse is that the elected president only ever represents close to 50% of the population, and he's close to all-mighty and can do whatever he wants without anyone really checking him.
In better systems coalitions between major parties form, and they represent a much bigger slice of the population, and they keep each other in check, having to compromise to not risk blowing up the coalition. And better systems also have a stronger and more living constitution. One that gets updated more frequently, and that has to be updated more frequently because it includes more details. Since constitutional changes then require a larger supermajority (e.g. 2/3 or 3/4), the governing coalition needs to take the needs of the opposition into account as well, because they need their votes when a constitutional change is required.
For example, the US has had 27 constitutional amendments (10 of which happened within a year of the constitution being created, they were basically 0-day-patches) over the last 236 years.
Austria has had about twice as many within the last 70 years.
These coalitions still happen with ranked choice but only if a minor party is popular in a district.
Except for Tasmania in Australia where minor parties have an even better chance. It has only 5 districts for state elections and each district has 5 seats. Greens often get a seat because their candidate is 5th most popular in a district.
In other states they are now winning seats but fewer than Tasmania.
I have heard the same stance often enough to definitely be able to say, "no one ever says that" is not correct. There are more than enough idiots who do say that.
Let S1 be the set of people who voted for Biden.
Let S2 be the set of people who voted for Trump's second term.
S1 ∩ S2 ≠ {}
If that's not helpful, let's try code:
s1 = getPeopleWhoVotedForBiden()
s2 = getPeopleWhoVotedForTrumpsSecondTerm()
if (x for x in s1 if x in s2 > 0):
print("There are more than enough people qualifying for for what I said")
And lastly, to reformulate the sentence:
There are lots of people who in 2020 voted for Biden and in 2024 voted for Trump.
hah, you looked up an intersection symbol, nice. And now I just cant help myself since you gave me that response..
So of 152 million votes cast, you'd like to show a sample size of just 1 person or more proves your hypothesis? seems pretty biased against the null hypothesis.
And your restatement of your hypothesis:
"There are lots of people who in 2020 voted for Biden and in 2024 voted for Trump."
You are proving "lots" with > 1? thats just not what "lots" means in english.
What may have been the largest organized protests in American history were just a few days back, the president has record-breakingly low approval, even his own party's talking heads are turning against him. If you're not going to be satisfied by anything short of armed uprising then at least be brave enough to say as much, but pretending that Americans just don't see anything wrong and aren't doing anything is an act of wilful and blatant ignorance.
I wouldn't rest on your laurels just yet. You'll know when you've begun to turn the tide because the beast will lash out. The restraint we are seeing right now just means they've got a whole lot more in the tank.
You dont have to look further than last October to see this same type of hubris play out. Kamala had momentum and there was 100% a point where if the vote happend then she would have won. For what ever reason they backed off on the "weird" stuff and started rolling out the neocons. The DNC is going to fuck you and you wont even see it coming.
You're only proving that you don't actually have any idea what's going on here, acting like we're resting on our laurels because there was a big protest. Nobody here is thinking "Yeah we made ourselves heard, job's done!" Nobody here says the fight is won, but you're out here acting like nothing is being done at all.
.... I love the protesters... I love the protests... but the mere fact youre coming at me like that meant anything other than we marched in the street on a Saturday tells me youre not taking this seriously.
You just wait until the 2A nuts come out. We all know they hate nothing more than a corrupt government, and the only reason they stockpile guns is to fight the government. Right?
We protect ourselves. I think there are enough examples of how the police and the justice system protects us to reference if you dont believe that yet.
It's a little funny that the Dumpies will ask "What rights did ICE ignore?" like due process isn't the rule of law. Those people are online everyday threatening death and violence to just about anything. Their own internet post history is going to lead to them to the same fate if the coup is successful.
That's just maga. I suspect Trump "winning" a third term and the events leading up to it will convince a substantial amount. Maybe not a majority, the only thing you can be sure of when dealing with americans is that they will always disappoint.
I would say the US has an executive with aspirations to implement aspects of a fascist state. As long as millions of people are protesting in the streets, the courts are ruling against the executive on points of law and people are standing their ground it is still a long road for the executive to get where they want to go. If the country really was full fascist you would be totally fucked and being shipped with your family to a concentration camp for disloyalty to great leader right now.
Unlike some other countries where law enforcement and prisons might be state run on principle, the US has a history of privatizing such functions. They had the union busting Pinkerton thugs, for profit prisons and bounty hunters. A society that didn't cry out when the Pinkertons were busting the heads of working people or kids were being railroaded into for profit prison slavery shouldn't be surprised when thugs are clearing the streets of immigrants. That is just America sadly. That nastiness has always been there.
I think a lot of people realize that trump is increasing the power of the govt, but the word fascist means different things to different people. Everyone thinks Hitler was a fascist, that Mussolini was one, but theres tons of people who oppose trump and think he fits into a different description that doesn't involve fascism. And ofc the people who do support him don't think he is and the ones that do are chill with it.
Everyone thinks Hitler was a fascist, that Mussolini was one, but theres tons of people who oppose trump and think he fits into a different description that doesn’t involve fascism.
And they would be wrong and they are failing to remain vigilant
For Texas at least, under penal code 9.31(a)(1-3) it’s presumed to be reasonable self defense to use force (it specifically does not mention what kind of force, but it is assumed that deadly force is included, I think)
against a person who “was committing or attempting to commit aggravated kidnapping, murder, sexual assault, aggravated sexual assault, robbery, or aggravated robbery.”
Are people in denial? It just seems like a commonly understood thing. I've talked to straight CNN consuming boomers and even they see it for what it is.
For the record I'm in Canada so maybe it's just hard to see from the inside.
I am pro-border in the fact that I think borders serve an important purpose and that laws surrounding immigration should exist and be enforced. That said, I think fixing immigration requires following the god damned laws and constitution, you don't enforce the law by breaking it. Fuck! Immigration courts and the entire immigration bureaucracy needs to be beefed up to handle this, and law enforcement of any kind needs to be working under the judicial system. Warrants are needed, you can't suspend habeas corpus, cops should never be masked and anonymous, and all law enforcement should be held to a higher standard than everyone else.
I think Trump is causing the legitimate action of enforcing our laws to look bad, and he is harming law and order for decades or longer. It should not be controversial to enforce laws, and if it is those laws need to be changed.
Despite how scofflaw this administration is, however, I do not think Trump will run for a third term. I don't think we as a country or even the Republican party as a whole is willing to that blatantly flout the constitution, and I think that at least 60% of both parties want what is best for the country. I don't think actual Nazis or true jackbooted fascists are more than 10% of the right (I can't believe I now think it's that high), but do believe 20-30% are exploited by grifters and opportunists. That might be naive, but it seems like.everyone is abandoning their faith in the fundamental good of others all across the country/world and I think that is sad.
We could spend all day throwing out numbers, making predictions, arguing over facts, and burning each other out. We could parade around our favorite talking heads and share link after link that proves our exact point. These are the mechanisms of control. These are weeds that grow faster than any one person can cut them back.
We've given so much of our lives to serve some cause that none of us believe in. Now your very liberty is under threat, if only you had the eyes to see it.
I do see the possibility, but if it is true then the only way to stop it is armed insurrection against a tyrant. Trump would have to dismantle the courts, blatantly violate the constitution, and fundamentally alter the government. The military would have to go along with it too. The problem is that you cannot make a preemptive strike or you give Trump a casus belli to do just that. Whomever acts first loses, and it should be the administration commiting unambitious treason first if you want to stop it. Until then, you need to keep working through the established legal system.
I still don't think Trump has the personal or political charisma to line up every hole in the swiss cheese of constitutional, legal, moral, and cultural protections to pull it off, but I'll be prepared to eat crow if he does succeed in overthrowing the government and becoming a dictator.
The only reason he wouldn't run for a third term is if he died in office. Which he probably will either way since I'm not expecting those elections to be fair. (I know it sounds crazy but they've broken so much in just 5 months and we're on the verge of war and martial law.)
And he has incentive to stay in office too: the main reason he ran was to stay out of prison. It was either prison or president.
That would require the federal election committee to violate the constitution by putting him on the ballot, then the same for every State government. This is an order of magnitude beyond the attempts to keep him off the ballots for Jan 6, as he was never convicted of or tried for it. The Supreme Court would need to destroy the constitution to rule favorably on it, and thus remove all their own power as the third branch of government.
The US is not yet as corrupt as the CCP or Russia, and Trump doesn't have the political and personal capital of Xi or Putin to rewrite the constitution to allow more/unlimited presidential terms.
I'm not holding my breath, honestly. A Democrat was shot and killed in her home by a MAGA terrorist and the GOP is taking the piss. They might not be there yet, but the intention is loud and clear.
Is your goal that we should just.. not say this is illegal? Not argue that it's not okay? Literally fold and accept fascism?
Because that seems to be the narrative you're pushing, which is the polar opposite of constructive in this situation.
Super weird and suspect that every thread seems to be full of people saying this is normal. That this is just how it is, that it's been going on forever, and that anyone who has an issue with it is being unrealistic. Really, really weird. Almost like they're cryptofascists.
Maybe I'm misunderstanding the context of the image. Are you agreeing with the people in the image or saying they're in denial by acting as though ICE should be held to the law?
What strikes me about the covid epidemic was how obedient people were. It showed that it was possible to shut down whole societies on a global scale. It was a real crisis that provided an unexpected opportunity for mass propaganda. Political strategists surely took notice. It must have looked possible then to submit a whole population into fascism and that's what we're seeing now. Real power is with the people though. It lays dormant and it merely needs to be awakened by a timely spark.
What? The fact people are willing to protect themselves from a harmful disease is evidence we can be brainwashed? Brains got washed, but they are not the ones you think that got "cleaned". You think it is strange that people followed guidelines put out by professionals in their fields as some form of brainwashing? That's funny, and sad. It's why we put those people in those positions, unlike now, where you have people going against experts and governing by "feelings". This is such a fucking terrible timeline...
I wrote that it was a real crisis and I didn't use the term "brainwash". The fact that people complied to official guidelines is of course a good thing in the event of a pandemic. But there was also overshooting. Not everything made sense. And there was definitely a lack of critical thinking and an absence of open debate. But my point is that it was apparently possible to create a high degree of conformity from above, a useful insight when you're trying to eradicate democracy and supplant it by fascism. How else would you explain the ease of what has been described as a coup for the past 5 months?
A life threatening, highly contagious epidemic, is NOT the time for "open debate"! Sheesh, this wins today's "Stupidest comment on the Internet" award.
My gf at the time spent a month in bed as a result of COVID. She was hallucinating about dead family members for a week in the middle. Fuck off with your "fat or had pre-existing conditions, most of which are fully controlled by diet or exercise." She's certainly not overweight and had no pre-existing conditons, nor was she elderly. Go fuck yourself until you have worn your fuck stick down to a nub and have no more fucks to give, you ignorant piece of shit of a person.
Early on, when the disease was just starting to spread, an absolutely critical time during a pandemic, nobody knew whether any of the crap you just spouted, was applicable. Just the people who gained their medical qualifications from Fox News, and thought they knew more than the actual experts, were excreting your kind of argument. NOBODY had been "exposed and recovered" at that time, fool.
Conspiracy theorists have NO place in public health discourse. You, and your ignorant ilk, are the reason so many people died unnecessarily.
Oh my god, do we get to bully a covid denier in the year of our lord, 2025? That shit is old news, man. You're like 4 years out of date.
Getting the vaccine if you are able is your civic duty. Not to your country, but to your fellow people. Your grandmother. The fact that you're scared of a needle I think just kinda makes you a coward. Where is your bravery? You're not getting any more apple tarts if you let your grandma die.
You must have not experienced covid in the United States. All I saw here was a hectic shitshow full of scores of people utterly rejecting any semblance of disease guidance - going so far as doing the opposite of whatever the institutions recommended. Then there were a few redeeming groups who decided to play ball - not out of obedience, but out of love and respect for vulnerable groups.
I am indeed from Europe, where streets were at times completely empty and at other times you had to walk in designated lanes. Mask mandates everywhere and unvaccinated people were ostracized.
If such a tiny thing like wearing a mask is too much to ask from you, your opinion is not worth shit in this debate.
It means you can't even accept minor inconveniences to save the lives of yourself or others.
If you are so incredibly egotistic, and so incredibly short sighted that you can't even do that, your opinion is obviously garbage and not worth listening to.
It's not even new. They did this to people during 2020 protests. They drove up in mini vans jumped out, grabbed people and pulled them into the mini van and drove off.
There used to be footage of it but I haven't been able to find it. I think it was happening in Portland and Seattle. At the time there was live stream footage. And it usually happened later in the night as people were cooling off and dispersing.
America hasn't been what it preaches for half century at least.
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/evelyn-bassi-illegal-abudction-portland-protests-1357279/
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/feds-unmarked-vans-portland/
The video snopes talks about I saw. Possibly even live streaming at the time because I was hooked on watching all that. Iirc it was a bronze gold colored minivan and the sliding door opened and 1 or two guys got out masked and just grabbed the person and pulled the protestor in and drove off.
Am from Seattle.
Yep, this happened in Seattle and Portland multiple times, just basically black bagging people into unmarked vans by... presumably, plain clothes / "off duty" / half kitted out, face obscured, no visible ID cops.
They typically did this black bagging to people who had not actually broken any laws, but were so effective at keeping protester morale high, and/or were simply causing overwhelming masses of people to defend them from, in many cases, literally entirely unprovoked police assault/brutality.
Most of these were the people they wanted to removr but knew that no charges would actually stick because they had nothing, and then release them 24-72 hours later.
Sometimes they'd black bag / white van people who had actually crossed the threshold into doing something they could actually charge you for, but most of the time, nope.
I know that in Portland the cops actively decided to act as body guards for fascists, and look the other way when they attacked people.
In Seattle, ... the cops intentionally started so much shit, assaulting nonviolent people, well we uh... we literally forced them to abandon their major police office in Capitol Hill.
As in, we seiged them. Surrounded the building for days. Eventually they burned a bunch of records and made a stealthy withdrawal in the dead of night.
That police center is only a few blocks from where the 'CHAZ' would be set up.
Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone.
As in, we literally drove out the local police and are thus now autonomous.
... We've still never seen the all the actual communications between the police chief and mayor, other internal police records... because the police destroyed them. They destroyed them because they almost certainly outlined numerous violations of the law in terms of orders issued, tactics used, illegal arrests/detainments, bullshit 'overtime' overpayments and other financial shenanigans, crimes committed by the police and probably all the way up to the police chief and mayor engaging in a criminal conspiracy.
I feel like this isn't talked about enough... You guys are badasses for that shit.
I was in Seattle during this. Word was people got snatched here but I don't recall seeing hard evidence myself. Portland though they for sure got caught kidnapping protesters
There were a bunch of theories the people they black bagged were undercover / plainclothes cops. Every video I saw were of younger white guys in good shape getting taken off the streets.
To be fair, you're not supposed to accept it. But the fascists sure would like it if you did.
Yep, a higher percentage of Americans support trump than weimar republic Germans ever supported Hitler. Fascist don't have to engage in electoralism once they securely seize the power of the pulpit.
I'm done caring about America as a whole, I'm creating my mutual defense/support networks with friends and family and preparing for the worse. Democrats are still stuck in thirdway politics as the Reichstag burns to the ground.
The way Hitler took over with such a small support was by dividing the remaining citizens into smaller groups. Unity is our most powerful asset in resistance.
Trump has also failed to obtain abject loyalty of the military, which will prevent him from control by force.
The problem is that also mimics hitler's ascent to totalitarian control. Even at the height of his power lots of career soldiers and especially sailors were never really ideologically aligned with Hitler. Unfortunately, at the end of the day people in the military follow orders.
That’s not accurate. Germany had a strict top-down chain of military command, hence the Nuremberg trials defense of “just following orders.” After the trials, the US military was redesigned with a break above the Commanding Officer. The CO must verify the legality and constitutionality of orders before giving orders to the troops, just as it’s the responsibility of the troops to refuse to follow illegal or unconstitutional orders. CO’s have the JAGs, or Judge Advocate General Corps, who are legal advisors at the CO’s disposal to ensure they have the resources needed to remain accountable to the law and Constitution.
https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/german-armed-forces-high-command
The Nuremberg trials, like most international laws were an invention of convenience. If someone attempted to apply them to US action in a foreign intervention today, they would not be successful. In fact the US has stated that they would sooner invade a system like the ICC than allow them to prosecute anyone in the military.
This may be a fact in doctrine, but in practice the military has historically has failed to fulfill this particular commitment. There have been several examples of US troops committing illegal actions commanded by officers without legal retribution.
You can refuse to follow orders you think are illegal, but more often than not it's a career ending action or punishable offense if not proven in court.....and military court is not exactly a non biased apparatus of justice.
This system depends on young soldiers with minimal educations and rights to stand up to a system that has an immencse amount of control over their lives. A system that has proven to defend higher command and officers in most cases, and to defend its overall image over anything.
Even higher commands ability to stand up to the commander in chief is limited, we can see this in the news today with active duty military members being deployed state side to conduct what is fairly obvious policing actions in LA and on the US border in a direct violation of posse comitatus.
You’re using an argument for the exceptions as the rule. It’s wildly sensationalist.
Out of 4,100 National Guard members and 700 Marines dispatched to LA, there has been one detainment of a US citizen, and no arrests. Detainment is currently being debated as a possible violation of the Posse Comitatus Act. https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-marines-carry-out-first-known-detention-civilian-los-angeles-video-shows-2025-06-13/
There are also many instances of the National Guard laying down their riot shields, and even taking a knee to support citizens in peaceful protest. https://www.militarytimes.com/news/your-military/2020/06/02/tennessee-national-guard-troops-lay-down-riot-shields-at-protesters-request/
The US has not signed the Rome Statute, and is therefore not beholden to the laws of the ICC unless in a nation that has signed said agreement.
My entire point was that the rules that are supposed to protect the general population are often interpreted to serve those in power. Posse Comitatus is supposed to negate the use of military members from being used for policing on US soil.
Meaning that the definition of policing is being semantically interpreted as "arresting people" when in reality policing is defined as prevention and detection of crime and the maintenance of public order.
What other purpose can the military be utilized against the general public other than to maintain public order?
First of all, the national guard are not active duty military personnel and can and are utilized in state policing actions. Secondly, laying down shields is not disobeying a direct order. Lastly we have historic examples of national guard members committing massacares against non violent protestors.
My point was that international law a kin to those laid down by the Nuremberg trials do not protect us from fascist utilizing the military against us.
Your claim was that we were granted protections via the establishment of the Nuremberg principals.....the Nuremberg principals are now moderated by the ICC via the 1999 Rome statute.
You are just proving my point for me. Internal laws are subject to interpretation via those who currently hold power (fascist), and external laws are inventions of convenience that we do not and have never allowed to truly moderate our countries behavior. My original claim stands, that we are not really in a much different scenario than in Hitler's Germany.
Securing your local community is the smartest thing to be doing right now
Yep, my faith in any established political party has been worn thin since the bush era. Right now I'm just working on teaching my LGBT friends how to maintain and shoot a rifle and how to properly stock a go bag.
And make sure you protest in ways the fascists approve of: no violence (the facists wouldn't like that) and make sure you're waving American flags (the fascists like to see American flags).
But remember you also gotta protest in ways the Dems would like too. So nothing too aggressive, and if your idea is anything less than perfect we should just not do it anyways.
(Actually we should protest like the French with fire bombs and guillotines)
If you see Ice agents covering their faces, call 911 and report a masked man with a gun.
Please forgive my ignorance but isn't the police force in USA known for its violence and profiling? Wouldn't they be "in" on it, too?
ICE isn't alerting local law enforcement of what's happening. They get a call about a masked gunman and they'll show up.
Can the police do anything when they show up? Aren't ICE federal agents and above the local police's jurisdiction?
Shoot first, ask questions later
Finally, some thing they are good for!
When local police show up, they'll make the ICE agents identify themselves.
From what I've seen (admittedly completely online anecdotes), the ICE agents flee before the local pd show up because theyre cowards
Doubt. Lotta local pd at some of these raids.
Lie and say they looked black so police show up faster and use their guns before asking to identify.
Police are more likely to show up and open fire on the civilians
Cops are there in minutes when seconds count.
You must live in a nice neighborhood. In my experience when seconds count cops show up in hours.
And get hauled away anyway.
You don't have to be the one being targeted to act against them. If I see gestapo going after someone, I'll make the call even though I don't fit the profile of who they're targeting today.
What is anyone supposed to do? All the checks and balances that are supposed to safeguard against this are non-functional, by choice. The only option is censored from even being mentioned and it means possibly fucking dying.
Aren't there a lot more civilian gun owners than law enforcement? I thought that was the idea behind the second amendment
No, the idea was that a good militia is all you need to keep a country safe, and that a federal army is a tool for government oppression. That's what the writers saw all over Europe at the time, so they made sure the fix that in their new country.
And then everyone pretended that wasn't the case
Technically you only need one bullet. A lot of this support for Maga in the US hinges on just one guy. Who would replace him? There is no one who will gain as much traction. And remember: as long as dictators die, liberty will never perish.
Next in line is JD "Couchfucker" Vance, which is like Trump, but with more brains (and totally onboard with project 2025); and even if you get him too, the next in line is Christofascist Mike Johnson, who would probably go the shortest route to Gilead if both his predecessors got assassinated.
That's more shooting luck than anyone will ever get, even if the Secret Service didn't look too hot when Trump got shot at.
And yet none of them are able to gather the support Trump has for some reason. DeSantas tried and got nowhere.
He only got nowhere because it was him versus Trump.
Right, something Trump has is stronger than what these other people have.
I know it's not feasible, but that is the argument that second amendment proponents make all the time. I would have expected to see them try, at least
Trump wants people to not resist him at all. He's still trying to retaliate against places where the "No Kings" protests took place and those were completely peaceful.
This is the insidious thing about authoritarianism. Once they have power, they can crush any dissent no matter what the dissenters do.
Peaceful protest? Crush it. If it gains any actual traction, just pretend it’s violent to justify violent oppression. Facts don’t matter and words can casually justify any action, no matter how heinous.
But violent opposition? The authoritarians dream of this, because it’s justification to bring everything they have to bear with zero accountability or justification. And since they are in power, they will have much greater force at their disposal. This is why Americas founders originally opposed the very idea of a professional standing army.
Only censored on reddit.
Only moderated on reddit. The censorship is everywhere because we're being watched everywhere - if you post concrete plans on Lemmy, you'll get a knock on the door.
it's america. if a masked random person attempts to abduct you, you fight for your life. and you do the same if you see it happening to someone else
And if it turns out to be a cop or ice agent, can you be charged, imprisoned or legally killed for doing so? There are laws for declaring that you're an officer, that was a safeguard so people could reasonably defend themselves. How strongly is that being protected right now under Trump?
Follow the money.
So there was no check or balance against money. Well, there was, taxes. But that stopped working mid century.
Citizens United is widely seen as the last wall preventing the rich from buying control of the country.
We aren't supposed to accept that law enforcement just does as it pleases, ignoring our civil rights and protections and donning standard identification markers so that each officer can be uniquely identified. But this is not all that new.
Most of the time we don't know we're being kidnapped by g-goons or the police are ignoring our rights until they're doing it, and we can only hope we get our day in court to challenge the arrest.
Since the development of DEA, the US courts have been carving out more and more exceptions to the fourth and fifth amendments of the Constitution of the United States, and by even the 90s (with some big thanks to RICO laws / rulings) we are no longer policed by consent, but by force, because there's no one around with more firepower to stop them.
This was only noticed by minorities, especially in the 1990s with the crackdowns against street gangs and feral youths. At that point we were seeing ur-fascism feature #8 ( The enemy is both too strong and too weak ) where street gangs are described as feral youths who can't be negotiated with, while the same gang is an international organized-crime syndicate.
Then the 9/11 attacks happened, and the PATRIOT act was signed, and DHS was formed, and we noticed that some Americans, typically Muslim Arab-Americans, but sometimes Persian-Americans, sometimes Sikhs...really anyone who looked too middle-eastern, got disappeared by LGMs (dudes who look like cops but without personal or department identification, sometimes without the yellow POLICE plates), and rendered abroad to black sites to get tortured. But much of the US overlooked it because we were sore about WTC1 and WTC2.
(some of us screamed like Cassandra that this was a big move towards fascist autocracy, but I digress)
When Obama took over FBI was searching hard for terrorists in US borders but couldn't find many, and had to invent some (Remember Kellyanne Conway's Bowling Green Massacre? In the actual Bowling Green event no-one died but two refugees were gaslighted by FBI with a budget into doing some inoffensive para-terrorist work, and entrapped into terrorism charges. They're still serving time.)
By then, our massive surveillance state was in operation and all of the US' internet traffic went through NSA, and when there were Islamist militants who were thinking about a plot to suicide bomb an American asset, we'd send a predator drone to literally burn his village down: the CIA drone program killed 50 civilians -- including grandmothers and children-- for every person-of-interest neutralized. We learned that while video games don't make kids violent, making real-world warfare like a video game still meant the operator squeezing the trigger got PTSD. US drone programs had a turnover rate about as bad as German einsatzgruppen (death squads who mass executed villages for betrayal or harboring Jews).
So in 2016 when Trump won, Cassandra over here screamed about the Obama administration disabling all the mass intelligence state and surveillance state assets before Trump could get a hold of them.
We got a break, as Trump pissed off CIA and the rest of the intelligence community, so they weren't talking for a while, but then, somehow, when he had a Heritage Foundation plan and staffers who knew what structures were in place, we elected him President of the United States for a second time. Even despite his insurrection charges (which were stalled until moot).
So yeah, the previous administrations, knowing this was going to be a problem gave the Trump regime is very own SS / Brownshirt secret police (who behave a lot like the Sicherheitsdienst under Reinhard Heydrich) complete with a concentration camp system that is overflowing due to purge quotas.
During the 2020 George Floyd protests, there was a move to abolish ICE who had been hunting undocumented folk and were sent in to brutalize the demonstrations, which only pissed off more Americans, and there was a movement to Abolish ICE (what was always just a paramilitary department to serve the will and interests of the current administration, id est, a secret police).
We are now suffering the consequences of having failed to follow through.
The recipe has been in play for over a decade, probably more. People can't stand up if they have nothing to stand on. Everyone is struggling. What the fuck is fascism if you have to concentrate on just surviving. That's the whole play. They give us just enough to get by so we can live with no time to think. It's not denial, it's an orchestrated structure. The system isn't flawed, it's working as intended
Add to that several decades of constant far right propaganda disguised as news, and a massive rightward shift of the Overton Window, and you end up with brainwashed citizens willing to cheer this shit on.
Add to that the systematic dismantling of our public education system to ensure that people don't have the historical and political context to understand the implications of any of it.
They (The Heritage Foundation and their ilk, I guess) really learned a lot of lessons from the Third Reich... This is the culmination of decades of work for these people, and it is working as designed for the most part.
It's a very difficult trap to escape from. If not impossible.
Generally people in America don’t get organized until there’s a disaster. That’s one of the lessons of the Great Depression/New Deal. Not the most optimal way to maintain democracy. It’s not really “maintenance” if you wait for the thing to break and then fix it.
That’s a pretty classic Marxist understanding of how class conflict actually happens. In response to a crisis a state can either adapt or fall into chaos if it can’t. That’s essentially what happened during the new deal era and the civil war respectively. Although arguably the external threats of WWII allowed the US to adapt rather than fall apart.
Ah, the American method in action!
funny how you never hear from the "cold dead hands" guys when tyranny actually happens
"good morning cold dead hands 😘"
Thats strange, she called me "warm lively hands"
You can be certain that a lot of concealed carry leftist will actively respond if something like this happens near/to them.
Lol
Lmao even
Rofls4realz
i hope so, but the people I'm referring to aren't leftists. they're the people who oppose any and all regulation and cite being able to defend against tyranny as the ostensible reason.
yet when this shit happens they're awfully quiet. because they're full of shit and fucking love tyranny.
I generally agree. I had one neighbor that always voted straight ticket and was a gun nut with a screw loose. Not a fan of tyranny though. I think losing his brother in Vietnam put a fire in his soul.
Is it legal in the US to shoot people who are trying to kidnap you?
I mean, anyone can go around claiming to be law enforcement or ICE or whatever, but with no badge or ID, how are people supposed to know that this isn't a gang trying to trafic them?
In vast majority of states there is a stand-your-ground law in place, which means you're explicitly allowed to use deadly force if you reasonably believe that you're defending yourself from a violent crime, and in minority there is a duty to retreat while outside of your home or workplace, which means that you still are allowed to use deadly force, but you have to try to retreat first, and only use force if you are reasonably sure that you can't run away.
Kidnapping by a group of people in plain clothes in an unmarked van is explicitly stated as an example of a case where use of deadly force is permitted by law.
I think that would count as self defence.
but would the court?
According to law, it's a matter of law in most of the states, and matter of jury instructions in a limited number of states. In other words, it is explicitly a law.
you're almost there
I'm pretty sure self defence doesn't apply against law enforcement, even if you don't know they are law enforcement.
There have been cases where firing upon law enforcement who failed to adequately identify as such has counted as self defence
It may not, but imo you do what you have to do to protect yourself against aggravated kidnapping, and then hope you/your lawyer can articulate how/why you did what you did later in court.
Oh, totally, no dispute there.
As Legaleagle put it in their most recent video: At that point it becomes logical to resist arrest, to run or to fight.
Falls asleep .... someone sharpies 'I'M A BIG FAT FASCIST' across their forehead.
Goes about their life for a month without ever noticing ... even when using a mirror.
You’re pretty much already there, bucko. I know it’s a silly image but if you’re only starting to worry now then you got a lot of catching up to do.
That's the joke though... the picture is from a sketch where one Nazi officer tells another that he's starting to worry that they're the baddies, after he realizes that their hats have skulls on them.
I am aware, yes, it’s just I’m completely out of patience for anything that sounds even remotely like the setup for “who could have seen this coming?!”
Like, the alarms have been blaring and nothing is being particularly well hidden and even right now there are way too many people who zero clue what’s going on at all.
The Gestapo could be hauling them away in cuffs and putting them away in camps and some will just go "why is this happening to me? there must be some mistake"
Anyone who is still on the fence is either only tuned into propaganda or is incapable of reasoning.
Or still thinks that the leopard won't eat their face, because it hasn't so far.
Yeah, for many the leopard has to actually be eating their face directly at the moment for it to be a problem.
There has to be some serious level of being downtrodden that's required to like empathy for everyone else in the world that's not them.
That's 'Murica in a nutshell
I mean America is a fascist regime. And you know who support fascism? Fascists. So I guess most fascists are kinda OK with what's happening.
That's not denial, that's full endorsement.
Must be nice living in such a black and white world.
I wonder what chain of thought led you to this conclusion, which is very strange to me. But at the same time, I'm not willing to start some kind of futile quarell over this so.. well, have it your way and have a good day.
This argument will just give the fascist leverage to call you a fascist. They are pros at projection and sadly you dont stand a chance.
The issue is fascists are going to lie regardless. There is nothing we can say, no way we can act that will prevent that. It is pointless to try.
Not asking that we try to confront the fascist populous. Asking we confront the fascist government.
I fail to see how this responds to my comment.
The op was saying americans are fascist so it makes sense the government is fascist. To claim the general populace is fascist will only get you in a shouting match of who the most fascist is. A distraction from what really matters, addressing the fascist regime occupying the white house.
Apparently not because they keep doing it and are effective in their propaganda when they have no right to be.
Fun fact: you know who gave them that power? Bill Motherfucking Clinton. And he fucking did it for money.
How long? My guess is that masked unmarked people that don't even verbally identify themselves will be shot at (and killed?) by someone as they're walking down the street when law enforcement are attempting to take into custody. My guess is that this shooter will either be killed by the unmarked and masked law enforcement or that person will be arrested and charged.
This is the point when all of the "every day carry" gun folks (and there are a lot of these) will then be faced with the question when they could every use their gun to defend themselves and not be facing charges themselves through no fault of their own.
I think thats when it finally tips enough people into the category to be against trump's actions.
To avoid armed targets, they have been calling people into court hearings, then they drop charges which allows people to leave. On the way out of the courthouse feds will abduct them.
It's pretty brilliant. If people become too scared to show up to court, then they get a real judicial warrant which allows them forcibly go into homes.
In a year: "Why are all these people turning their backs on the law and embracing the mob?"
Some truly evil shit.
It's called "disappearing someone" and it was something that was supposedly done by dictators and tyrants.
Like today's USA.
In context it looks like a goon squad kidnapping a man.
I think the line between a liberal democracy and fascism is much blurrier than most people think. I suspect the transition from one to the other, going in either direction, is entirely dependent on how much internal forces threaten the ruling capitalist class.
Right now, I think the US is on the decline but hasn’t yet experienced a crisis which really threatens the power of the capitalist class. Fascists seeking power therefore need to manufacture crises in order to accumulate power. That’s where I think the US is at right now.
However, I’m not sure how well it will really work. Democratic state leaders are effectively demonstrating that the existing law enforcement structures are perfectly capable of violently cracking down on dissent. So if you’re a wealthy capitalist, why would you push your bought and paid for judges and politicians to make Trump president for life? It seems like a needlessly risky move in my opinion.
That said, we can only say that the rich will operate rationally to protect their own interests on average. Individually, they can be wildly erratic like Elon Musk has proven to be. As such, the more wealth is concentrated into fewer and fewer hands, the less predictable the outcomes are.
True, fascism is the ultimate weapon that capitalists use in reaction to labor movements and class consciousness gaining strength. In fact, I’d argue that given modern advances in communication technology, which allow people to communicate and organize easier than ever, a fascist swing was almost inevitable.
It’s a shame that western world leaders don’t like dialectic materialism. We might have identified the problem before it seized power.
Propaganda has improved. People don't have communities. It's worse. People have to be more clever than before to compensate.
Who’s the rest of us? As far as I can tell, there isn’t anybody actually doing shit. Well, maybe one or two people. And a misguided and toothless protest isn’t going to achieve anything, no matter how many people show up. I hope you find your rest of us before it’s too late.
The top 10% with an absolute absurd amount of the wealth are the ones that don't care. Their miney, therefore their lifestyle seems safe.
The poorest idiots care deeply but think Trump is on their side and will come down to sweep them up right before it gets really miserable cause he needs to break standards of living for all the rich for them to rise up.
What will get people to finally pivot is unknowable. It will be when there is nothing left to lose, probably. If that ever happens without help from the outside, I dunno. It's not like Germans could Stop Germany from the inside or Japan it's fascism, or any other group.
But I think it's wrong to say the average American doesn't care. The over represented, as always, dont care, which includes out government. The average American agrees deeply we just don't have much power and all disagree on the solution.
Yeah, pretty depressing huh?
Hopefully effort becomes cool again.
The guys so old, I'm not sure hell make it through this term. He's clearly not well, but that's what makes this all crazier. Dems at least knew to kick out their senile old man, how the Republicans are okay with this is wild.
They’re okay with it bc Trump has a cult and many of his cult members are the ones voting the other republicans into office. If they kick out trump, they kick out a bunch of their voter base. Because unfortunately there’s a larger amount of non-cultist republicans that will still vote republican but just not for trump bc “there’s a difference” between the guy doing the bad things and all his best friends “begrudging” helping him do the bad things apparently. Basically they’re delusional about how politics actually work
Sigh
The same way they have been in denial until now. Why did you wait for trump to comes to terms with it?
Before we elected Trump, the fascism was still nascent. Ur-Fascism as Eco called it.
It's dishonest to pretend that this is the same level of fascism that we've been experiencing for decades. It's not. Trump and the Heritage Foundation kicked it into overdrive.
You know what's dishonest? Not acknowledging most governments have been fascists for decades.
Words have meanings... Maybe take like 5 mins to look into the things I referenced.
Like do you maybe not know what "nascent" means?
Read "Ur-Fascism" by Umberto Eco if you want to understand my point from someone who lived through it in Italy. It's like 8 pages long.
Being relatively a child, mostly. Add to that the apparent social progress of Obamas presidency.
Right , bombing the middle east and deporting thousands of inmigrants was progress apparently
Pull ICE masks, I would let them shoot me just to protect the person they're abducting, fckn nazi's, u wanna shoot an american citizen and make me a martyr? be my guest and see what'll happen
The answer is nothing, at first. If enough people start doing it though, shits gonna get real pretty fast.
Fine I'll be your guess but don't get uppity with me
What pic are they referencing?
They're referencing the abduction of NYC mayoral candidate Brad Lander.
There's gotta be
criminalsnon-ICE who exploit this. Like it must be so easy now for ransomers to kidnap somebody.Did you not see the security company guy who dressed as a cop and murdered a state senator, her husband, and shot another state senator?
But see, it was the other team, so it's okay.
https://amp-tmz-com.cdn.ampproject.org/v/s/amp.tmz.com/2025/06/11/man-impersonates-ice-agent-philadelphia-robbery/?amp_gsa=1&_js_v=a9&usqp=mq331AQIUAKwASCAAgM%3D#amp_tf=From+%251%24s&aoh=17503210763828&referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com&share=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.tmz.com%2F2025%2F06%2F11%2Fman-impersonates-ice-agent-philadelphia-robbery%2F
That's a hell of a link bud
https://www.tmz.com/2025/06/11/man-impersonates-ice-agent-philadelphia-robbery/
Another article
https://edition.cnn.com/2025/02/04/us/ice-impersonators-on-the-rise-arrests-made-as-authorities-issue-national-warning
Thanks. Since moving from Reddit to Lemmy, I've become way more aware of what I'm clicking on. I'm pretty sure the amp project links are just for mobile phones n stuff, but it's good to be aware
Thanks. Google was serving me nothing but slop
as if by design...
Cracks me the fuck up the rest of the world thinks this now.
This has been the case since Bush passed Citizens United and it was even happening before that. RIP Rosenbergs.
I thought Citizens United was an Obama thing. Are you sure you don't mean the Patriot Act?
I thought it was a Supreme Court thing? What did Obama do?
It happened during the Obama administration but it was in response to shit under Bush from people being critical of him/his admin. Obama did not support Citizens United.
Not every bad law is fascism.
I would say only in a vacuum.
Both in a vacuum and in an atmosphere, if you call something fascism because of one bad law, you're doing nothing but deminishing and watering down the term. It means something, you know.
There are still people here who still make the excuse that Harris is just as bad as Trump, you guys are fucked as a country
You always like to claim people say that, but no one ever says that. They said they wouldnt vote for anyone in any party who supports genocide. You twist it around to be the words you prefer. I call that lying, but to each their own.
Meanwhile their vote or lack thereof directly empowered someone who actively encourages it, they just don't want to take responsibility for that part.
It would not have been a problem if you had ranked choice voting.
https://fairvote.org/
If Musk sets up his own party that would split the conservative vote so the Republicans would finally be open to ranked choice. Would probably require ⅔ majority in Congress.
But Dems might be too hungry for temporary power to support such a much needed fix.
Ranked choice is nice, but why not just have an actually democratic system with coalitions? No need for a single winner.
Ranked choice allows for coalitions like in AU.
Maybe you mean Multi Member Proportional voting like NZ and DE. That is the best system but complicated. US cannot even deal with converting to metric so MMP would result in exploding heads.
Yes, that was what I was going for. The really big issue with FPTP systems, especially hard ones like the US is that they create two-party systems which are incredibly undemocratic.
Third parties just can't exist, because they split the vote for your side, so the only choice you have if you are unhappy with your party is to not vote or vote for the other party, and all that does is benefit that other party you'd be even more unhappy with.
You know, kinda like one might think Harris isn't left enough, so they end up helping Trump to power.
But what's even worse is that the elected president only ever represents close to 50% of the population, and he's close to all-mighty and can do whatever he wants without anyone really checking him.
In better systems coalitions between major parties form, and they represent a much bigger slice of the population, and they keep each other in check, having to compromise to not risk blowing up the coalition. And better systems also have a stronger and more living constitution. One that gets updated more frequently, and that has to be updated more frequently because it includes more details. Since constitutional changes then require a larger supermajority (e.g. 2/3 or 3/4), the governing coalition needs to take the needs of the opposition into account as well, because they need their votes when a constitutional change is required.
For example, the US has had 27 constitutional amendments (10 of which happened within a year of the constitution being created, they were basically 0-day-patches) over the last 236 years.
Austria has had about twice as many within the last 70 years.
These coalitions still happen with ranked choice but only if a minor party is popular in a district.
Except for Tasmania in Australia where minor parties have an even better chance. It has only 5 districts for state elections and each district has 5 seats. Greens often get a seat because their candidate is 5th most popular in a district.
In other states they are now winning seats but fewer than Tasmania.
That guy is saying it: https://lemmy.world/post/31562244/17770374
(Or actually, they are saying Harris is worse.)
I have heard the same stance often enough to definitely be able to say, "no one ever says that" is not correct. There are more than enough idiots who do say that.
That guy is a republican.
Statistically, there are more than enough people who voted for Biden and then for Trump 2.
That sentence makes no sense.
Let's put it into math instead:
If that's not helpful, let's try code:
And lastly, to reformulate the sentence:
There are lots of people who in 2020 voted for Biden and in 2024 voted for Trump.
hah, you looked up an intersection symbol, nice. And now I just cant help myself since you gave me that response..
So of 152 million votes cast, you'd like to show a sample size of just 1 person or more proves your hypothesis? seems pretty biased against the null hypothesis.
And your restatement of your hypothesis: "There are lots of people who in 2020 voted for Biden and in 2024 voted for Trump."
You are proving "lots" with > 1? thats just not what "lots" means in english.
And I think we're done here.
Well you have a deranged view of the world so I don’t really care what you think is a lie, when you can’t even be truthful about your own bullshit
Potato potato.
For some it'll probably take til his fourth
What may have been the largest organized protests in American history were just a few days back, the president has record-breakingly low approval, even his own party's talking heads are turning against him. If you're not going to be satisfied by anything short of armed uprising then at least be brave enough to say as much, but pretending that Americans just don't see anything wrong and aren't doing anything is an act of wilful and blatant ignorance.
I wouldn't rest on your laurels just yet. You'll know when you've begun to turn the tide because the beast will lash out. The restraint we are seeing right now just means they've got a whole lot more in the tank.
You dont have to look further than last October to see this same type of hubris play out. Kamala had momentum and there was 100% a point where if the vote happend then she would have won. For what ever reason they backed off on the "weird" stuff and started rolling out the neocons. The DNC is going to fuck you and you wont even see it coming.
You're only proving that you don't actually have any idea what's going on here, acting like we're resting on our laurels because there was a big protest. Nobody here is thinking "Yeah we made ourselves heard, job's done!" Nobody here says the fight is won, but you're out here acting like nothing is being done at all.
No. Im pushing like I've been pushing for the last 8 years. Grow up.
You know what Hitler did when he had low approval? He made disapproving illegal.
Just wait for it.
Now? You think this happens at the drop of a hat? The entire system is built that way since decades.
Right? The fuck these people think Vietnam was?
An international hug, with Agent Orange. That's a tasty breakfast beverage, right?
We did just have the largest protest in the history of the nation... I think some of us are aware.
.... I love the protesters... I love the protests... but the mere fact youre coming at me like that meant anything other than we marched in the street on a Saturday tells me youre not taking this seriously.
You just wait until the 2A nuts come out. We all know they hate nothing more than a corrupt government, and the only reason they stockpile guns is to fight the government. Right?
Oops, they actually like tyranny, go figure.
We protect ourselves. I think there are enough examples of how the police and the justice system protects us to reference if you dont believe that yet.
www.SocialistRA.org
You have no idea who I am or what I do. Don't be so arrogant.
If I made you angry, good. Angry people are more likely to act.
Angry people are more likely to act. Yep , that' how you end up getting punched in the face. Or assassinated.
... who's being arrogant again?
Not nearly enough apparently
The George floydd protests didn't get nation wide comprehensive justice system reform.
The Iraq war protests didn't stop the Iraq war.
Occupy wall street didn't change how the economy functions.
The protests were baked into the Project 2025 plan from its inception. They've changed nothing.
Stop being a defeatist.
These people don't need "The Event" to attempt their stupid fucking plan. It will be 100% fabricated if need be.
I wasn't even implying they needed it, just that none of the people in power are going to change their minds on anything as a result of the protests.
It's a little funny that the Dumpies will ask "What rights did ICE ignore?" like due process isn't the rule of law. Those people are online everyday threatening death and violence to just about anything. Their own internet post history is going to lead to them to the same fate if the coup is successful.
"Due process only applies to citizens" is what they'll say. Which is bullshit, but that won't stop them from parroting it.
When you ask them how someone proves their citizenship while being arrested, they'll just get angry at you.
For real! People are just so fucking stupid.
It’s not out of context, that’s exactly what is happening.
Wait, you think that will convince them?
They'll just turn around and go "well FDR had FOUR..."
That's just maga. I suspect Trump "winning" a third term and the events leading up to it will convince a substantial amount. Maybe not a majority, the only thing you can be sure of when dealing with americans is that they will always disappoint.
They'll just convince people it's not a third term, because they didn't need to have an election so it's just a continuation of his 2nd lawful term.
Resistance comes in more forms than just screaming and punching like a child. You need to educate people and organize them.
Um, the fascists are cutting the dept of education...
Cutting? You're behind on the times, friend, they literally put out an executive order to dissolve it.
Well then its done, there is no "united" states, the country is dead.
Yeah fr it's really discouraging for anybody with an education, a lot of them are just leaving.
I would say the US has an executive with aspirations to implement aspects of a fascist state. As long as millions of people are protesting in the streets, the courts are ruling against the executive on points of law and people are standing their ground it is still a long road for the executive to get where they want to go. If the country really was full fascist you would be totally fucked and being shipped with your family to a concentration camp for disloyalty to great leader right now.
Unlike some other countries where law enforcement and prisons might be state run on principle, the US has a history of privatizing such functions. They had the union busting Pinkerton thugs, for profit prisons and bounty hunters. A society that didn't cry out when the Pinkertons were busting the heads of working people or kids were being railroaded into for profit prison slavery shouldn't be surprised when thugs are clearing the streets of immigrants. That is just America sadly. That nastiness has always been there.
It seems that way in context too.
I think a lot of people realize that trump is increasing the power of the govt, but the word fascist means different things to different people. Everyone thinks Hitler was a fascist, that Mussolini was one, but theres tons of people who oppose trump and think he fits into a different description that doesn't involve fascism. And ofc the people who do support him don't think he is and the ones that do are chill with it.
And they would be wrong and they are failing to remain vigilant
Watch videos from the Mustard Mussolini's events. His supporters would gladly sign up for that.
For Texas at least, under penal code 9.31(a)(1-3) it’s presumed to be reasonable self defense to use force (it specifically does not mention what kind of force, but it is assumed that deadly force is included, I think) against a person who “was committing or attempting to commit aggravated kidnapping, murder, sexual assault, aggravated sexual assault, robbery, or aggravated robbery.”
Are people in denial? It just seems like a commonly understood thing. I've talked to straight CNN consuming boomers and even they see it for what it is.
For the record I'm in Canada so maybe it's just hard to see from the inside.
If they aren't in the streets they are in denial
I am pro-border in the fact that I think borders serve an important purpose and that laws surrounding immigration should exist and be enforced. That said, I think fixing immigration requires following the god damned laws and constitution, you don't enforce the law by breaking it. Fuck! Immigration courts and the entire immigration bureaucracy needs to be beefed up to handle this, and law enforcement of any kind needs to be working under the judicial system. Warrants are needed, you can't suspend habeas corpus, cops should never be masked and anonymous, and all law enforcement should be held to a higher standard than everyone else.
I think Trump is causing the legitimate action of enforcing our laws to look bad, and he is harming law and order for decades or longer. It should not be controversial to enforce laws, and if it is those laws need to be changed.
Despite how scofflaw this administration is, however, I do not think Trump will run for a third term. I don't think we as a country or even the Republican party as a whole is willing to that blatantly flout the constitution, and I think that at least 60% of both parties want what is best for the country. I don't think actual Nazis or true jackbooted fascists are more than 10% of the right (I can't believe I now think it's that high), but do believe 20-30% are exploited by grifters and opportunists. That might be naive, but it seems like.everyone is abandoning their faith in the fundamental good of others all across the country/world and I think that is sad.
We could spend all day throwing out numbers, making predictions, arguing over facts, and burning each other out. We could parade around our favorite talking heads and share link after link that proves our exact point. These are the mechanisms of control. These are weeds that grow faster than any one person can cut them back.
We've given so much of our lives to serve some cause that none of us believe in. Now your very liberty is under threat, if only you had the eyes to see it.
I'm with you! I hate numbers, and facts!
/s
Wow, you really understood what I was talking about. So impressed.
I do see the possibility, but if it is true then the only way to stop it is armed insurrection against a tyrant. Trump would have to dismantle the courts, blatantly violate the constitution, and fundamentally alter the government. The military would have to go along with it too. The problem is that you cannot make a preemptive strike or you give Trump a casus belli to do just that. Whomever acts first loses, and it should be the administration commiting unambitious treason first if you want to stop it. Until then, you need to keep working through the established legal system.
I still don't think Trump has the personal or political charisma to line up every hole in the swiss cheese of constitutional, legal, moral, and cultural protections to pull it off, but I'll be prepared to eat crow if he does succeed in overthrowing the government and becoming a dictator.
The only reason he wouldn't run for a third term is if he died in office. Which he probably will either way since I'm not expecting those elections to be fair. (I know it sounds crazy but they've broken so much in just 5 months and we're on the verge of war and martial law.)
And he has incentive to stay in office too: the main reason he ran was to stay out of prison. It was either prison or president.
That would require the federal election committee to violate the constitution by putting him on the ballot, then the same for every State government. This is an order of magnitude beyond the attempts to keep him off the ballots for Jan 6, as he was never convicted of or tried for it. The Supreme Court would need to destroy the constitution to rule favorably on it, and thus remove all their own power as the third branch of government.
The US is not yet as corrupt as the CCP or Russia, and Trump doesn't have the political and personal capital of Xi or Putin to rewrite the constitution to allow more/unlimited presidential terms.
I'm not holding my breath, honestly. A Democrat was shot and killed in her home by a MAGA terrorist and the GOP is taking the piss. They might not be there yet, but the intention is loud and clear.
Apt
I read you thing, bro, it did not fall on deaf ears. Bit chaotic and rambling. Type the tune of the imperial march if youre not a robot.
Call your rep - demand Israel pay reparations for attacks.
lol
Is your goal that we should just.. not say this is illegal? Not argue that it's not okay? Literally fold and accept fascism?
Because that seems to be the narrative you're pushing, which is the polar opposite of constructive in this situation.
Super weird and suspect that every thread seems to be full of people saying this is normal. That this is just how it is, that it's been going on forever, and that anyone who has an issue with it is being unrealistic. Really, really weird. Almost like they're cryptofascists.
HMMMMMMMM.
Me?
Maybe I'm misunderstanding the context of the image. Are you agreeing with the people in the image or saying they're in denial by acting as though ICE should be held to the law?
Im just trying to rile up anti-trump sentiment, so which ever makes you more upset I guess.
Seems like you totally misunderstood the OP. Like, you understood the exact opposite of what they wrote.
What strikes me about the covid epidemic was how obedient people were. It showed that it was possible to shut down whole societies on a global scale. It was a real crisis that provided an unexpected opportunity for mass propaganda. Political strategists surely took notice. It must have looked possible then to submit a whole population into fascism and that's what we're seeing now. Real power is with the people though. It lays dormant and it merely needs to be awakened by a timely spark.
What? The fact people are willing to protect themselves from a harmful disease is evidence we can be brainwashed? Brains got washed, but they are not the ones you think that got "cleaned". You think it is strange that people followed guidelines put out by professionals in their fields as some form of brainwashing? That's funny, and sad. It's why we put those people in those positions, unlike now, where you have people going against experts and governing by "feelings". This is such a fucking terrible timeline...
I wrote that it was a real crisis and I didn't use the term "brainwash". The fact that people complied to official guidelines is of course a good thing in the event of a pandemic. But there was also overshooting. Not everything made sense. And there was definitely a lack of critical thinking and an absence of open debate. But my point is that it was apparently possible to create a high degree of conformity from above, a useful insight when you're trying to eradicate democracy and supplant it by fascism. How else would you explain the ease of what has been described as a coup for the past 5 months?
A life threatening, highly contagious epidemic, is NOT the time for "open debate"! Sheesh, this wins today's "Stupidest comment on the Internet" award.
Of course it is, unless you advocate authoritarianism
I didn't realize it's ok here to insult people
My gf at the time spent a month in bed as a result of COVID. She was hallucinating about dead family members for a week in the middle. Fuck off with your "fat or had pre-existing conditions, most of which are fully controlled by diet or exercise." She's certainly not overweight and had no pre-existing conditons, nor was she elderly. Go fuck yourself until you have worn your fuck stick down to a nub and have no more fucks to give, you ignorant piece of shit of a person.
You just proved why "an open debate" and "critical thinking" among people who have no clue at all are pretty bad ideas during a pandemic.
Early on, when the disease was just starting to spread, an absolutely critical time during a pandemic, nobody knew whether any of the crap you just spouted, was applicable. Just the people who gained their medical qualifications from Fox News, and thought they knew more than the actual experts, were excreting your kind of argument. NOBODY had been "exposed and recovered" at that time, fool. Conspiracy theorists have NO place in public health discourse. You, and your ignorant ilk, are the reason so many people died unnecessarily.
Oh my god, do we get to bully a covid denier in the year of our lord, 2025? That shit is old news, man. You're like 4 years out of date.
Getting the vaccine if you are able is your civic duty. Not to your country, but to your fellow people. Your grandmother. The fact that you're scared of a needle I think just kinda makes you a coward. Where is your bravery? You're not getting any more apple tarts if you let your grandma die.
You're an idiot
You must have not experienced covid in the United States. All I saw here was a hectic shitshow full of scores of people utterly rejecting any semblance of disease guidance - going so far as doing the opposite of whatever the institutions recommended. Then there were a few redeeming groups who decided to play ball - not out of obedience, but out of love and respect for vulnerable groups.
I am indeed from Europe, where streets were at times completely empty and at other times you had to walk in designated lanes. Mask mandates everywhere and unvaccinated people were ostracized.
As they should be.
No they shouldn't
If such a tiny thing like wearing a mask is too much to ask from you, your opinion is not worth shit in this debate.
It means you can't even accept minor inconveniences to save the lives of yourself or others.
If you are so incredibly egotistic, and so incredibly short sighted that you can't even do that, your opinion is obviously garbage and not worth listening to.
I can see that reading comprehension is not your forte
Our perceptions of the covid pandemic wildly differ
They’re following a playbook that is about 100 years old though. This is nothing like Covid.