Plus, the lines aren’t nearly as cut-and-dried now as they were in the 1860s. Nearly every state is purple, an archipelago of urban and near-suburban blue areas surrounded by seas of red rural areas. Could states even hold together? Would we break down all the way to the COUNTY level? Urban enclave nations created out of clumps of counties, borders locked down and patrolled, surrounded on all sides by fascist MAGA-land?
=> More informations about this toot | View the thread
What would it look like? Would it be a bloody, violent affair like the first Civil War? Or would it be more like a Civil Cold War? Would Trump order the military to open fire on citizens of seceding states? Would the military obey? Would he, with senile rage and murderous glee, order actual nuclear strikes on former American soil? We already know he really, really wanted to nuke something in his first term…
=> More informations about this toot | View the thread
God, can you imagine? States seceding from the USA. Maybe some become sovereign nations, maybe some combine to form larger nations… about three major geographic areas in all. They can form the “North American Union”, analogous to the EU (free trade, freedom of movement, etc.), along with Canada and Mexico.
It’s not a new idea, and I’m sure it’s still wildly unlikely, but it’s also more plausible today than at any other point in history.
=> More informations about this toot | View the thread
Like, we could organize a general strike… if we got a critical mass of people did it. We could all choose to stop paying federal taxes… if, again, a critical mass of people did it.
Any truly meaningful action we take is dependent on numbers so large that there’s no way they could retaliate against us all, so we don’t get the numbers to take action because we don’t have the numbers to take action. It’s a chicken-and-the-egg problem on a national scale.
=> More informations about this toot | View the thread
I know it isn’t nearly that simple, could literally mean a second Civil War, and would mean abandoning some of the most vulnerable people in red states, but I sure as fuck don’t want to be part of a nation that’s doing this shit. One would hope seceding states could form underground railroads to get at-risk individuals out of Gilead… god, I don’t know. How do you fight evil on this scale? Especially when we’re all paralyzed by the Prisoner’s Dilemma to organize any real collective action?
=> More informations about this toot | View the thread
Okay, seriously though, when the federal government starts disappearing people into extrajudicial off-shore concentration camps, maybe it’s time for some states to say “hey, you know what, we’ve thought about it and have decided it’s probably not a good idea to be a part of a nation that does this anymore.”
I really think states that provide massive federal funds may need to start threatening Trump, Musk, and their thugs with the big “S” word if they don’t pull back on this Nazi shit.
=> More informations about this toot | View the thread
And the thing is, I’m sure there is plenty of waste and inefficiency in some of our existing regs. But eliminating that is not easy.
By way of comparison, I’m constantly trying to clean up old, confusing and/or inefficient code in my employer’s codebase. Would I like to just scrap it all and redo it? Of course! But that would be insane.
And at least in my case people wouldn’t die as a result. Musk’s plan absolutely would kill people, and he doesn’t care one bit about that.
=> More informations about this toot | View the thread
Idiots think Musk is some sort of uber-genius, and meanwhile his big idea for the entire concept of a federal government is “do-over”
The unstated but obvious reason for this is simple: actually going through existing regs and identifying actual waste and inefficiency would be HARD. So instead he’d rather delete everything, wait for people to die, and then react to that by reinstating whatever regulations would’ve prevented their deaths.
That’s beyond “sociopath” and into “psychopath”.
=> More informations about this toot | View the thread
This alone should get Musk escorted off the premises, stripped of all security clearances, and have every federal contract his companies have cancelled. This man is dangerously unstable and deluded.
https://infosec.exchange/@Em0nM4stodon/113945697615203956
=> More informations about this toot | View the thread
It is okay to be relieved that Trump is backing off on the Mexico and Canada tariffs while also laughing your ass off at what a spineless little weakling coward he is. The two are not mutually exclusive.
Dude proposes utterly catastrophic penalties on our biggest trade partners for no good reason, markets threaten to tank > 5%, so he immediately backs down claiming he got them to do stuff they’re already doing.
Trump’s a fucking joke. Musk, he’s the real danger.
=> More informations about this toot | View the thread
The “announce tariffs on Mexico, Canada and China, and then ‘postpone’ the Mexican ones” move this administration just did is a classic mind game — taking something a way and then giving part back.
So the markets are barely down and people are breathing sighs of relief, despite the fact that the Canadian and Chinese tariffs (and retaliations) will still be devastating to our economy.
God, humans in general are so fucking stupid.
=> More informations about this toot | View the thread
I have been trying to follow the overall mantra “prudence and preparation, not panic” during these days — and, well, my life in general. But god, that’s tough, especially when so many people seem to be going about their lives as though it’s all “business as usual”.
Sometimes I feel like I’m going insane — how can all of these folks act so nonchalant? I admit I have been prone to overreaction in the past, but A NINETEEN-YEAR-OLD EDGELORD NAMED “BIGBALLS” HAS FULL ACCESS TO OUR FEDERAL PII.
=> More informations about this toot | View the thread
The angrier Americans get at Trump, the more he will make Americans suffer, because it is how he thinks. “Punish my enemies.”
As for Musk, he is part of a group that believes the vast majority of us should be eliminated for the good of the rest of humanity (read: the top 0.1 percent). Make no mistake, his goal is to drastically reduce the population, and make the remainder feudal subjects.
God, I am trying to be optimistic… but god
=> More informations about this toot | View the thread
As an American, I’d simply like to say this:
I’m sorry.
=> More informations about this toot | View the thread
My 17yo daughter asked me if we’re going to be okay (“we” as in “our family”). I wanted to say definitively that we will, but couldn’t. We are in a far better position to weather what may come better than so many others… but my employer does have lots of government business, and personally we have too much debt and too little liquidity.
She says she has so much fear and anger and nowhere to put it. I told her I know exactly how she feels. I wish I could say more.
=> More informations about this toot | View the thread
So Bitcoin has been on a slow downward spiral for several hours now and I am enjoying watching the collapse.
Edit: At the time of this post, Bids on Bitstamp outnumber Asks by 5 to 1. People are desperately trying to dump their coins as it continues to lose 2 to 3 percent hour-over-hour.
=> More informations about this toot | View the thread
I watched the classic Trek original series episode “This Side of Paradise” today, quite possibly the most blatant example of the Protestant idea of toil and suffering being integral to life in all of Trek.
It’s almost comical to me, the whole “ugh, vegetarian people in perfect health and harmony, and worst of all, making no PROFIT, gotta put a stop to THAT” message. Even more so given the state of the world today.
=> More informations about this toot | View the thread
When the day of reckoning comes — and make no mistake, it WILL come, even if it takes a long time — every spineless Democrat in the federal government that capitulated to this shit, acted like it’s no big deal, and covered their own asses while throwing the rest of us to the wolves should stand right there alongside the perpetrators in whatever new iteration of the Nuremberg Trials are held.
If we ever have free elections again, every one of them must be primaried. Every single one.
=> More informations about this toot | View the thread
We are past “doomscrolling” and have entered the realm of “doomliving”
=> More informations about this toot | View the thread
I think I’ve hit schadenfreude tolerance… it’s not helping the way it has before.
I need to stop thinking and do something mindless for a while.
=> More informations about this toot | View the thread
=> This profile with reblog | Go to gregly@retro.pizza account This content has been proxied by September (3851b).Proxy Information
text/gemini