If you’re the person being arrested, your options are to surrender or fight and hope they only beat you within an inch of your life without actually killing you (with the understanding that the chances of them killing you are increasing every day). Unless you manager to use legal force against them in which case you are 100% dead.

Community defense is when OTHER people come to rescue you, typically using nonviolent methods to harass and inhibit the agents until they give up and leave. Of course, the chances that agents will just kill them are increasing every day, too. Either way, once you’ve been targeted you’ll likely need to go into hiding, and engaging legal council is probably a good idea even if you’re a citizen.

I don’t think this is pessimistic or nihilistic. I feel like it’s a pretty accurate assessment of the likely possibilities. I’m open to hearing other interpretations, though.

It doesn’t matter if it’s a blue or a red state if there aren’t any more elections because they’ve been suspended because of war with, say, NATO.

The absolute least we can do is force them to jump through the hoops. Like, I get that it feels pointless but it’s better than just giving up and letting them do whatever they want.

They WANT you to feel like there’s no point so that you’ll give up. They want you to give up because that’s the easiest way for them to win. Why give them the satisfaction? They haven’t actually won yet, but even if I can never win I’ll won’t give up no matter how impossible the victory, and neither should you.

Just because they mandate body cams doesn’t mean the agents are 1) wearing body cams, or 2) turning them on.

This is a fascist regime, they’ll say anything and do whatever they want. Policy and reality aren’t connected in any meaningful way. All you’ve pointed out is that they’re either lying or ignoring policy, both of which are par for the course.

Fascists weaponize hypocrisy to get what they want: power. Is anyone surprised anymore?

No court in the country would uphold Stand Your Ground used against a law enforcement officer of any kind, no matter what.

“Yeah but what if–”

“Except ICE doesn’t–”

“The person in the house doesn’t know–”

No Matter What

It was 14 sheckles, but they had to divide them between the eight of them.

You’ve successfully and correctly identified the problem with using the “left-right sliding scale” to describe America as being that there is no left.

You don’t even understand enough to get why the comparison is relevant.

People said LITERALLY the same thing about ADHD. You’re straight up mistaken in your thinking, and you need people like me to tell you that because you refuse to learn about the things your criticizing on your own.

But you’re probably just going to accuse me of bias and ignore me. That’s what all the other science deniers do, too.

Being pro vaccine doesn’t excuse you for using anti-science and prejudice to attack other medications.

Maybe you should learn more

I don’t care

That’s what I’m talking about. You’re attacking a medication without understanding it and have an active desire to not understand it. You’ve made up your mind, in ignorance, and are using your prejudice to justify advocating against that thing you refuse to understand.

I see this exact attitude with all sorts of science deniers from Flat Earthers to racists. It makes the world a worse place. Stop it.

I hope so. My next car was going to be a Toyota or a Honda, and… well…

The thing is that, afaik, coincidentally gerrymandering by race isn’t sufficient to get the map thrown out. It has to be intentionally gerrymandered by race, with evidence to support such an assertion.

And the incredible thing is that Republicans can’t keep their damned racist mouths shut, and they keep incriminating themselves by either saying the quiet part out loud or getting so specific with their gerrymandering that it’s no longer plausible that it’s just a coincidence.

They’d get away with it if they were smarter (but then, if they were smarter they wouldn’t be racists)

You misunderstood. They mean that the vaccine is still protecting from the strains that ARE in it, so it’s not reasonable to forego the vaccine just because of one strain that’s not in it.

Having a hobby with community helps a lot because it gives you the option of channeling that extra ambition into the community. For example, I do historical reenactment (Society for Creative Anacronism) and one if my hobbies is making coins. I’ve taken commissions, sure, but I get a lot more enjoyment out of learning and teaching about historical coin making and giving my coins away to people who don’t make their own (which is most people).

And of course there’s a smaller community of coin makers within the SCA, and we get to share our work with each other, talk shop, collaborate from time to time, etc.

Community really makes a big difference.

The craziest part is that the GOP would still run advertisements against him calling him a communist socialist fascist far left radical that wants to trans everybody and give all our money and jobs to those lazy freeloading illegals that he paid to vote for him.

No, actually, the craziest part is that MAGA would believe them.

As far as we know it’s not actually using any facial recognition at all.

It could just be using the scanned face to generate fake evidence of non-citizenship. It would be SUPER easy to make an app to do this using generative AI. You know, like Grok.

Not arguing your conclusion, but to answer the question regarding the question

Just appealing a ruling doesn’t mean he doesn’t have to follow the ruling. He still has to follow the ruling until a judge, any judge involved in the case, says that he doesn’t have to follow the ruling as either a temporary stay of said ruling or a permanent judgement.

So if he doesn’t do as ordered (and I agree that he won’t) he is 100% in violation of the law AND the judge’s orders.

But also he’s immune to prosecution for official acts, so why should Trump give a shit about any of that?

They think they can bribe fascists for favorable outcomes, but what they’re still in denial about is that fascists do whatever they fuck they think will get the m them the most power in any given circumstance, including going back on promises (money paid, money taken), extorting for more money, and throwing anybody they want Uber the bus.

There’s no making deals with fascists, there’s only getting scammed by fascists.

Fascists love what the military and police represent (to them, strength and order) but any individual who deviates from the script is a traitor who deserves to have their life ruined or worse.

Just look at Kegbreath’s speech to all the generals. Fascists don’t care about reality (whether those generals were competent) but only care about the appearance of power (facial hair and too much weight around the middle don’t “look powerful” and therefore are as bad as treason).