I’m wondering if I should just delete lemmy to stay under the radar. 🤔 (I’m a US Citizen currently residing in the US, and moving out of the country is not really an option)
I feel so conflicted on this. On one hand, this is kinda like giving in to authoritarianism, but on the other hand, dissenting is kinda dangerous. 😓
I don’t think this is something we have to worry about in the near future and I don’t think it will happen under Trump. What concerns me is the way the “system” is being set up so that alternative points of view or other parties just won’t have a chance to win an election or survive a lawsuit.
The groundwork is being laid so that people way more extreme than what we are seeing now can come into power and then stay in power without any way of removing them.
The current administration is setting things up where in order to “count” you have to be 1) loyal to Trump and 2) loyal to the republican party (don’t want any RINOs!). Heck, you can subscribe to typically republican principals (lower taxes, lower spending, right to bear arms, strong military, etc…) but you aren’t a “real” republican unless you un-waveringly support Trump.
But a true patriot is loyal to the Constitution. But now, you can’t be a republican and be loyal to the constitution, you have to be loyal to Trump. And that is setting things up to go very badly.
I’m not going to travel to the US just in case they triangulate my ID. Haven’t said anything terribly bad about USA but still, why risk it.
Less likely if we are gun owners
A persecution fetish is a hard drug for gun owners, among other idiots.
You’re right. We should trust the police to protect us. After all, it’s not like our police departments are filled with right-wingers who have a track record of regularly murdering innocent civilians or anything…
…Oh wait, that’s riiiiight…
(Of course, I realise arguing with an American about guns is a fool’s errand but sometime you’ve got to try.)
OK so hypothetically let’s suppose a right-wing cop has decided to add you to his list of murdered innocent civilians, has parked his car on the boundary of your house and is walking towards you.
At what point exactly do you get your gun out and shoot first? Spell it out please, I’d really like to understand how this plays out.
Please include the response of his partner who is still in the car, what that partner radios back to base, and describe the multiple responses of those who will now respond to the reports of a cop-killer. Explain how you think the resulting siege will play out and describe exactly how you win this scenario (where “win” is defined in terms of you living and not going to jail).
Ok dude when they come to take you from your home and put you in the camps I’m sure you will be happy you are unarmed and defenseless.
Gun rights are for everyone. Unironically everyone capable of responsibly owning a gun should. But you won’t get magically good with one if you never train.
If you have a friend who already has guns ask to join them on the range to learn the basics. If not find a class to learn safe gun handling, then go to the range to practice and build skill. Guns are a serious and powerful tool, but like most serious and powerful tools when you use them safely you have a ton of fun too!
From there if you really want to be as effective as you can learning how to move and communicate well is the next step. And that can be practiced via video games, airsoft, hiking etc.
Only if people collectiely excercise that right by forming a militia, otherwise they’ll just raid your houses individually one by one and take your guns.
Ironically, its less likely for people who aren’t right-wing to have guns. Blue states, and especially Blue cities make it so difficult for people to get a gun due to all the permits you have to obtain from the police department, who would just find bs reasons to deny your permit because you know, pigs be pigs.
If you have a gun and they raid your hosue, they now have a legal right to kill you no matter what you do since you are now a threat with deadly force.
Sure and they can just as easily shoot you no matter what and say it was a phone, you were reaching for something etc
Correct but would having gun lower or increase your chances at getting killed tho
That’s the question here
Lots of states allow private sales with no background checks required. People should see if they live in/near one.
If so hop on mewe, or some other social site, grab some cash and get you one! Gun shows are awesome for this too.
My solution is to VPN everything out of country. Not a single packet exits without going through a double hop VPN, with both hops being outside the Fourteen Eyes.
On top of that I run an ad/tracking blocking DNS server that’s updated pretty frequently.
Every single person who disagrees with the administration on the internet? Incredibly unlikely. That’d be literally 10s of millions of people, if not over 100 million. The US prison system currently has a capacity of ~2 million. It’s estimated that globally there are ~11.5 million people in prisons. So you’re talking about locking up several times more people than are currently locked up. It’s just not possible.
The scale of what you’re suggesting is just unimaginable. How much manpower would be needed to lock up tens of millions of people? Nearly the entire non-incarcerated population of the US would need to be employed in building and staffing prisons and doing the police work to track down and arrest people.
And what would that do to the US (and global) economy to remove tens of millions of people from the workforce and force the rest of the population into servicing those prisons?
Even in the strictest countries with the most draconian censorship, they don’t lock up people who are just disagreeing with the dictator/administration. They lock up people who make a name for themselves and get recognition/go viral. If you have an account that gets a HUGE following and you don’t just disagree, but attack and criticize, then you might end up with some problems.
To avoid this, just don’t let yourself get a big following with an account that’s super critical. If you notice you start to get a following, just delete that account and start a new one.
Camps are easy to build.
Small camps, yes. Camps with enough facilities to hold several times more than the current global population? No, not at all.
Listen at some point its time to realize you dont give a fuck about their threats, accept death as a possibility, and keep to your principles.
Like that man who stood in front of the tank during Tiananmen Square protests of 1989.
Im pretty sure were headed into such an event locally.
Like that man who stood in front of the tank during Tiananmen Square protests of 1989.
The guy didn’t die immediately. If you watch the full video, he was taken away by plainclothe police. Probabaly got disappeared and tortured. 😖
Torture is the most scary part of it.
Extremely unlikely. Not for another 20 years or so, worst case scenario, and by then they probably won’t care about now.
First off, there’s way too many people who criticize the government to arrest everyone, secondly it’s completely unnecessary. Complaining about the government doesn’t really do anything other than allowing people to vent their frustrations and feel more content. It’s the same way Trump obviously isn’t going to “end elections forever” like people say, virtually every country in the world has elections, regardless of how actually democratic they are, because they’re a nice little ritual that lets you feel free and in control. It would be like saying that Trump is going to knock down the Statue of Liberty - he doesn’t have to.
Now, there are reasons to establish more secure lines of communication, like if you’re involved in actual organizing or if you’re either helping people do illegal things or planning to help people do things that could potentially become illegal - for example, shipping Plan B or trans hormones to people in red states. Laws in some red states about “pushing transgenderism on minors” could theoretically be interpreted so broadly that if you post information or supportive messages on a public forum and a minor in a red state happens to see it, they could try to come after you for it - but that would probably be found unconstitutional.
Using secure lines of communication for routine, everyday stuff helps keep those lines secure by generating more chaff they’d have to sort through, as well as familiarizing yourself with it and getting more people on board. However, you shouldn’t scatter to the wind preemptively and self-censor, beyond just not fed-posting.
It’s not illegal to have an opinion dude. Calm down.
Until the secret police invite you for a round of tea.
There was this news report about a french scientist being denied entry to USA, because they critiqued the science budget cuts. While not arrested or something, it’s still telling.
I mean, its hard to calm down after reading the news about Mahmoud Khalil. Sure, online comments is not the same as a protest, but I feel like its only a matter of time before they start digging through the internet.
Consider this: Like the “Storm Area 51” meme where they said “they can’t arrest all of us!” if all of us keep dissenting and never stop, well… they can’t arrest all of us.
Literally 45 million people are registered Democrats, and while the USA has the largest prison population per capita, that tops out at 2 million. There’s about 1.5 million Law Enforcement Officers in the USA. The US military is about 3 million people, and a bunch of them are stationed worldwide, not here at home.
So tops they could have 4.5 million people trying to arrest/disappear 45 million people. They currently don’t even have the facilities to hold that many.
I repeat, they cannot arrest all of us.
Also, all the massively democrat areas are… the big cities… the economic powerhouses of the country. They’d be literally shooting themselves in the foot and getting rid of all their competent knowledge workers. They would have to massively increase immigration to replace them. Even Elon Musk doesn’t think it’s worth training the dumbfuck MAGA crowd, he wants to import Indian labor.
Nobody said that doing what’s right would be easy. Or safe. Only that it’s worth doing.
Not likely. There wouldn’t be enough working hours in the 4 years available.
Very unlikely. They don’t have the prison cells to lock up half the population nor the manpower to identify them with how many people DOGE is firing. You’re more likely to just lose your job rather than get arrested.
You know what they called Germans during WWII who just went along with the nazis because why fight, you’ll just lose?
Nazis.
Dissenting is the only thing that will actually do anything to make things better.
Rolling over and stopping is giving up before the fight has even started.
Further, pretty sure the entire contents of the internet have been sucked down into that NSA Utah Datacenter since it opened in May 2014.
Not to mention the corporate surveillance systems of Meta, Reddit, Twitter, and so on. If you ever had an account, just because you deleted it doesn’t mean the data got deleted. Even Reddit has been seen restoring comments after they were changed and deleted. Facebook has been known to have “shadow profiles” on people for like fifteen years now.
Also Room 641A implies that the phone companies will happily divulge the history of your text messages to the administration as well. There is and hasn’t been privacy in a long time in any real way in the USA and they’re definitely gonna leverage that.
If Trump is ignoring the law, he’ll ignore any laws that prevent the government from using that data against American citizens. I think it’s healthier to accept it than to try to pretend all that data isn’t already out there for the taking.
If you’ve ever been critical of Trump or Republicans in the last 11 years, just get used to the idea that it’s probably a foregone conclusion and get prepared to be involved.
I don’t mean buy a gun. I mean get involved in community gardens, community support networks and other types of Mutual Aid. We’ll need to support one another and hiding from what is happening and hiding our opinions because we’re scared isn’t going to help.
Do you have respect for the journalism outfits that have already turned tail and given up on seriously criticizing Trump? Do you have respect for every judge who pussed out on holding Trump accountable before the election? Because I doubt you do. Well, history will look at you the same way, if anyone even remembers your name.
Nobody remembers Germans in 1941 as anything but Nazis. The only ones who are remembered for not being Nazis took risks and didn’t lay down and die. It’s different now, the surveillance network is massive, there’s no hiding from it, so it’s pointless to hide from it instead of embrace it and prepare.
Do you have respect for the journalism outfits that have already turned tail and given up on seriously criticizing Trump? Do you have respect for every judge who pussed out on holding Trump accountable before the election? Because I doubt you do. Well, history will look at you the same way, if anyone even remembers your name.
Good point
Further, pretty sure the entire contents of the internet have been sucked down into that NSA Utah Datacenter since it opened in May 2014.
There is a truly prodigious amount of weird porn on a government server somewhere if true.
I learned a new word today thank you.
This is 100% correct. No notes.
In the long run, shutting up won’t save you from fascism. Every inch you give is a foot they take, and they will take and take and take if you let them.
If you’ve never wondered whether people living under dictatorships regret not exercising their rights more when they still had them, now’s the time to start pondering.
People in Germany protested in front of a Gestapo building in 1943. Post your posts.
Just enough so you know it happens. It wouldn’t be secret.
This is the correct answer.
