America is only in a decline because you choose to see it as declining. Conservatives saw the progress that was being made as the decline of their version of “how it should be”, proposed an entire Project book of solutions, and have rapidly stopped the decline of their way of life at the expense of everyone not in their camp (well, a lot of them are fucked by it but they never thought it would happen to them).

Sometimes progress is revolutionary and rapid, sometimes it’s tunneling through bedrock with your fingernails. You might not see the other side in your lifetime, but what you achieved makes the job of the person who comes after you that much easier. Right now conservatives are filling every hole we’ve ever started tunneling- from women’s right, to minority rights, to civil rights regardless of what race/gender/or orientation you are- with concrete and they’re not going to stop until they erase what we have done.

There’s a lot of things that happen in the world that neither you or I have the power to change. But every day you chose to let something you could affect be trampled unchallenged, your apathy is their gain. Conservatives banded together despite their differences and showed they were willing to commit violence to get their change, and they empowered the most selfish among them to be their figurehead. I really don’t know what left-wing Americans want, their own super-lib version of Trump that will use authority to make all their dreams come true, or to sit around and be well-meaning victims who blame a decline on the inability to find a dictator of their own. You have agency, go use it even if it’s not going stop every wrong currently happening.

This encapsulates why it’s so hard to get the majority of Americans to care. The cycle of war, price increases, dwindling quality of life, crumbling infrastructure, growing wealth inequality, racism, misogyny, bigotry; it’s all normalized over decades. Americans don’t get shocked by anything unless it happens directly to them. And not “oh gas prices are up again, that sucks”, but “a cop gunned down my child”. Without having to suffer personally a lot of us will continue to abide the suffering of others and act like being made aware of it is an affront to our right to blissful ignorance.

“ICE Out!” varies state to state. Minnesota and Portland are targeted with an increased presence because the regime wants to control the kickback. In my state there’s no mass presence even though the arrests are still occurring. They’re less visible, harder to track, don’t build castles that can be sieged, and the vast majority of the work is being done by local/state police officers because state leadership are boot-lickers. ICE creates bonfires for attention but a lot of the work is being carried out dimly and discretely. It’s a lot harder to take action, organize counter-protests, make local chats, and follow them with whistles when it’s one or two unmarked cops trolling vs a squad of them going door to door.

Odin might listen, if he’s feeling generous. But even he can’t change fate. Plus he’s notoriously fickle. So since you’re going to die anyway; die on your feet, not your knees.

Agreed. I’m down for vandalism as a pastime as long as we recognize it’s pretty much the least one can do and changes nothing, compared to other efforts. It’s basically irl memeing, good for a laugh, good for pissing off the MAGAs, but at then end of the day the dude putting his name on the money still has more than us and will just print more if all we do is deface it.

You can’t even be troubled to get off your keyboard and meet like minded people in real life, so I question your commitment to organize a general strike much less take any direct action against your enemies. How do you think the masses survive a general strike? It would take weeks and weeks to put a dent in the pockets of the oligarchs. We survive the hit to ourselves, which is far more devastating, by the support of our neighbors and the people in our community, the people we met at protests and rallies, the people you think are beneath you. You’re the leftist equivalent of a Facebook MAGA, loudly blasting your opinion and invoking the names/histories of those who did something in their time like you’re the second coming but hoping others will get the ball rolling. But you sit at home while others actually “do” and are contemplating bugging out. We could use your help, but if you’re just here to get famous, get your own, or duck out when it gets too serious, go fuck yourself.

From the looks of the comment history, they plan on writing “pedo” next to his signature on the cash and bugging out of the country. So, performative bullshit followed by running away when it gets too tough.

That’s cool as long as you make sure you’ve cleared the building of any non-human persons prior. Start lighting up pets or livestock willy-nilly and I’ll give you a taste of your own medicine, personally. ✊🐾

This is one of the biggest problems with a general strike these days. The wealth inequality between them and us is such that even a year long strike will only ruin most of us, meanwhile they’ll get a government bailout even though they never missed a payment on their yacht. You might be able to destroy a MAGA supporting small business, but you’ll wreck yourself and your like-minded neighborhood small businesses along the way. I don’t have a solid solution, just throwing this out as food for thought.

Because society has decided parental rights override teenage autonomy. Runaway and they’ll call the cops, who will return you to them, or if they want to be asses, throw you in juvie. So you maliciously comply while expressing your utter disdain for them until you attain the age of majority, then you abandon them and move on with your life. At that point you become a wage slave, have to live somewhere, and much like Dark Helmet, realize you’re surrounded by assholes.

“This shit probably what they did when it happened in Nazi Germany.”

If you’re unaware of fate of opposition groups in Nazi Germany, what they did or didn’t do, you could always read up on history. It’s out there, right at your fingertips. Everything from their mistakes to their successes. It’s one of the great things about history, it already happened so you can learn from it.

While they were eating, Jesus took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to his disciples, saying, “Everyone who get in gets a butt-snipe.”

It’ll be volunteer checkers, we have no shortage of them here. They’ll use it to harass anyone who doesn’t meet their expectations, which also means that cisgender women who aren’t conventionally “attractive” and effeminate but cis gay men can be hounded as well. It’s all their favorite victims in one and they can avoid consequences for false reporting by pretending like they did so in good faith. Interestingly, the Idaho police lobbies spoke out against this legislation because even they could see that it’s so aggressive and so difficult to gather evidence they didn’t want to deal with it. Shocking, I know.

Historically whether to have all gender restrooms or specific ones has been at the discretion of the business, and Boise has a lot of all gender ones. However, other legislation has been pushing to force out the right of business owners to choose what they want to do in their own businesses, probably because they planned on this legislation all along. Because, you know, party of small government.

Truly, shit for brains.

Haywire. Musically they might not hit me as deep and profound as say, Bad Religion. But for live show intensity… Fuck, it’s like the 90s again. A sweaty crush of humanity getting their eardrums blown while someone back-flipping off the balcony knocks their teeth out. Fun for all ages!

I’m in a strange boat. My bio mom was young when she got pregnant so I was put up for adoption. My adoptive mother was a cold, cruel woman who was emotionally and physically abusive; adoptive dad just ignored it and told me to not upset her. She did things like withhold medical attention to extract confessions about things I’d done she didn’t know about, destroyed personal objects like toys/clothes/cds, told me she didn’t love me but was legally obligated to take care of me, left me on the side of the road when I was 6 so the coyotes would eat me, stoked fears of a werewolf under my bed so I wouldn’t get out of it after she put me in it (needless to say, I pissed the bed well into elementary school because of that, which I got beaten for).

I had a lot of rage as a youth, though almost exclusively self-harm. Found punk in my teens and channeled the rage for my mother into rage at authority in general, and eventually found productive means of achieving that rather than mindless violence at whatever I think oppresses me. Still, 30yrs later, I love to thrash and be thrashed in a pit and the measure of a good night is “am I bruised and bleeding”.

But, I found my calling in dog rescue and training, a career where cruelty, heavy-handedness, and force are ill-serving. It’s a field a lot of men struggle in (unless they just beat a dog into submission) because the mannerisms and bravado the define how western society tells men they should act will make a scared, under-socialized, untrusting dog reject them. The terrified, the deaf, blind, wheelchair bound dogs are my specialty because I have an inner gentleness the, by social standards, would be called effeminate. I’ve helped hundreds over the years and it is one of the proudest achievements of my life.

I found my birth mother well into adulthood. She’s a hospice nurse and cat rescuer whom I share an uncanny amount of personal quirks with despite zero association aside from genetics. We’ve become wonderful friends and I have integrated into my bio-family after 20yrs of no contact with my adoptive one. I did get one boon in my childhood though. One set of grandparents were the kindest, gentlest, most loving grandparents anyone could hope for and quite likely the reason I didn’t end up a total sociopath or suicide.

Trump has never been much for requiring consent, especially when spreading herpes.

Deliberate, apathetic, myopically optimistic that this can be voted out and things go back to how they were; all of the above? Even among the non-MAGA there’s still a lot of folks who aren’t the direct targets of the regime and unless they speak out against it could live quietly under it’s boot because of their skin color, gender, or sexuality. They’re some of the hardest people to convince to do something because there’s a fear that doing something will draw undue attention or put them at risk when they’d rather resent it but not risk it. And protesting is risky. Trigger happy cops, mass surveillance, opposition members who show up to shoot crowds or drive into them. But to not do anything is to let their scare tactics win. It is true, a million people holding signs doesn’t mean shit to this regime, but making new connections with people in your community, real connections face to face and not just anonymous internet chit chat, that is what makes these worth something.