Drug use was huge in the 1950s, 60’s, and 70’s. Strange that people reminisce about those times as a paragon of successful society.

It’s also an era with peak unionization, high marginal tax brackets, and active monopoly busting. It has some of the lowest wealth disparity the US has seen.

The racism and other issues were huge too, but at least you could work a job and feed a family in most places.

But no! It can’t be the current issues are the wealthiest 1% crushing the rest of us. Just because the average salary is quickly trending to a poverty state and home are unattainable to most people… Never. Can’t be that. It must be the drugs causing it. Instead of the damage causing people to seek escape from reality, which drugs offer a means to do… Nope, can’t be that.

Good. Gas prices are much too low in the US. This just continues the cycle of world damaging automobile centric infrastructure and carbon emissions.

I feel you misunderstood. North Korea has elections. Russia has elections. Syria under Assas had elections. Strangely, the dictators always won by huge margins. Many dictators have a farce of a democracy to both give the people they rule a veneer of hope of freedom and to muddy the waters on the international stage.

Stalin had elections in Soviet Russia but he made it clear he didn’t care who voted. He cared about who counted the votes. Once the democratic institutions are subverted and their independence destroyed by a leader that leader gets to choose who sits in the seats: judges, legislators, bureaucrats, officers, and especially elections officials.

You’re right about the citizens being responsible for defending the institutions. In the end, the ultimate responsibility for the health of the republic lies with the people, not the government. The US does not understand just how much we have failed to defend the republic and we are on the verge of losing it.

It’s the same reason dictators love elections: they appoint the people who run them to wrap the dictators actions in a veil of fake approval and oversight. It’s just rubber stamping fascism.

Conservatism consists of one core value: there should be laws that protect, but do not bind, the in group while the same laws bind, but do not protect, the out group.

Then immediately borrow real money against the paper value of your new merger company. Pocket a few billion and use some to bribe the feds to not audit you.

It’s crime all the way down.

The “Land of the Brave” but was completely belied by our response to the 9/11/2001 terrorist attacks. We cried and lashes out at random thing until we hurt ourselves over and over.

Brave would have been standing strong and not trying to genocide the middle East writ large. Instead we did the PATRIOT act maneuver and removed our civil liberties before flushing our world leadership position down the toilet out of fear.

Here’s the especially fun part: the people deciding ‘norm’ will always find a way to slice the in group into ever smaller wedges.

The Right Wing is a death cult. It eats everything until they’re forced to eat themselves because without an out group to persecute they don’t have any real purpose. So, they just keep making more out group until they’re forced to shoot themselves too.

Land of the free! Small government!

Just small enough to fit into your pants…

Every vote for a Republican/Conservative is a vote against liberty.

It’s been that way on a lot of vectors. For example, if you are neurotic about something and poor, you are called crazy. If you’re neurotic about the same thing and rich, then you’re eccentric.

That is a gute Idee.

I’ll make a note and see if I can convince someone to tag along for our appointment.

So far my German immigration process has been hazy at every step. It’s more like the information isn’t clear and the process requires careful reading of shifting rules all the time. Not so much antagonism, more like underfunded infrastructure.

We’re moving with as many of our adult children as we can convince and logistically manage out of this place. The US is losing two STEM PhD holders, multiple bachelors in engineering, and other bachelors degree holders. Yes, we’re stupidly lucky to have the resources to make the move, but it’s going to basically destroy my retirement resources. It’s worth it if my children have a chance of a better life. We’re racing the clock to get out before the borders are closed.

Fuck the Nazis in charge of this place and the people who voted them into power.

When the various circuit courts allowed slower level judges like Canon to keep not enforcing good law on the people staging a coup, the judges allowed the Constitution to be destroyed. It’s just a piece of paper unless it’s upheld and defended.

The right wing has been undermining the federal courts for decades with unqualified ideologue appointments and this is the result. The rule of law is gone and the coup needs to remove any and all remaining opposition. It’s classic dictatorship 101 to remove judges who oppose you, both through legal and violent means. The courts failed to act as a body of law for decades and now they are in serious trouble.

Pride wasn’t a parade. Pride was a riot. The parades are the compromise to stop lighting things on fire until people were treated as people.

Last weekend I used a scrubber to delete every post and comment from my 15 year old Reddit account, then deleted the account, so I’ve finally burned the boats on the move. Lemmy is perfectly fine as it is. It’ll ebb and flow for users, but I’ve been happy for a year here now.

… so no contempt of court? Every person “just following orders” from the top on down needs to be arrested, charged, and detained until the courts decide on the punishment for refusing to follow the law. Unless that happens there’s no law and no Constitutional Republic in play.

Have fun paying your taxes, fellow peasants.

The US administration did disband/downsize (who can tell anymore since they’re being illegally secret about government doings) the agency who develops the annual GDP numbers. In the future it will all be made up numbers to suit their immediate goals.

1984 here we go.

My family and I are off to Germany.

After watching a violent coup attempt on Jan 6th, 2020, then absolutely no serious reaction by the US leadership to arrest and persecute the leaders of the coup, I knew it was time to bail. I started writing applications in fall 2020. It took years to get a good spot and to make arrangements with my ex wife over the kids, but it’s coming to fruition now.

I put in a few applications with Canada (BC/Victoria), but didn’t pursue it too hard. I figured if the US actually went down the fascism route as much as I feared, Canada wouldn’t be far enough away.

Is Germany better? Only maybe. They’re having a major fascism surge too with straight up neo-Nazi movements, but at least their government had some backbone to deal with it. The US is a fraking jellyfish in the face of open coup attempts so it’s done.

A failed coup with no actual punishment is just practice for the next one.

According to the US Supreme Court, a US president cannot be prosecuted for crimes (if they’re related to their official duties, but whatever goes, I guess). This means that Canada is faced with the fact that they’re being attacked by a foreign power with a ruler not beholden to the rule of law. If they give in, they’re going to be conquered by a king who is not bound by a national constitution, legislative body, nor courts. This is an existential threat to their freedom as individuals with rights.