fascism does not care about legality, and it doesn’t care about pretext

Very very true. However, most of the country does. If they were already “doing it themselves” and this stuff didn’t matter, they would have arrested Pritzger, kicked Jimmy Kimmel off the air, that CBP commander in Chicago wouldn’t be showing up to court every morning, things like that. There is a reason they’re starting by focusing on vulnerable communities without much support from the rest of society, and obeying this elaborate pretense that they’re “enforcing immigration law” and pretending to stay inside those boundaries so elaborately.

I can pretty much guarantee you that if the citizens of Chicago had been obeying your advice here so far, Pritzger would have been arrested by some sort of federal agents already.

All I can really say is read the book. I know you have your way of looking at it and I’m honestly not trying to disrespect it, because I get it, but also, how many successful revolutions have you written the guidebook for? I think for Sharp that number is close to double digits now.

Yeah. I mean you might be fine. If the cops show up, you explain what happened and you didn’t do anything wrong, and everything checks out, you might get to go home and the detective might call you the next day just to close out the loop and you’ll be fine. But… do you want to bet the rest of your life on it working out that way?

Again, be polite. As a matter of realpolitik it is extremely important that you not fit into the “hostile suspect who just killed somebody” bubble. But, also, while you’re being polite and getting access to your lawyer as quickly as possible so you can clear the air and give you reasonable statement to them, it’s still Shut the Fuck Up Friday. You have no idea what the cops and prosecutors may decide to read into what single sentence you happened to randomly blurt out while your blood is still pounding in your ears.

I also started training in Brazilian jiu jitsu which is a pretty fun way to get into shape. I am getting good at grappling and choking big guys out.

Honestly everyone should take some kind of self-defense classes. I know something about it but I am horribly out of shape right now, which probably isn’t a good idea.

And it doesn’t hurt to level up some skills that you can use to help your community if the does unthinkable happen.

This is very sincerely a really good point. I might do some first aid classes and things, it does indeed seem like shit will get quite a lot wilder before it ever gets unwild again.

But I do have an expectation that I’ll need a gun eventually, and if that’s true, I should have one now so that I can practice with it.

Yeah, I feel you on that. You’re not wrong.

My van was down by the river though, it’s good because you can go swimming every morning like John Quincy Adams

call the police, give a statement, go home, and sleep like a baby

This is the only part I strongly disagree with

I actually have seen someone ask a lawyer about this. The answer the lawyer gave was:

• Call 911 right away
• Say you’re in a fight and you need the police, give the location, hang up
• Wait for them to arrive, cooperate. Probably best to put the gun down before they arrive. They will be twitchy, they will really want you to give a statement. Do not. Be fully cooperative and respect their desire not to get shot and to know what’s going on without saying anything. Say you want a lawyer and you’re happy to cooperate with a statement after that. Probably they will arrest you.
• Once you’re in contact with a lawyer, your statement to them can be through your lawyer. Be friendly and polite, but also, just because you didn’t do anything wrong doesn’t mean you can’t get fucked.

I modified step 2 slightly, this was from back before there were cameras everywhere so you probably need to be more mindful of that. Don’t do anything that makes you look guilty, definitely nothing that makes you look dishonest. But for fuck’s sake don’t just “give a statement” if you just killed somebody.

I don’t pretend to be any kind of expert, but I’m happy to talk about what I do know if ever you’re interested.

I’ve done shooting at the range a few times. I know the physical mechanics, I’m talking about knowing what to do and how to react in a situation where people are killing each other or might start killing each other. Like a lot of things, it seems straightforward until you’re in it, and then all of a sudden it really doesn’t.

Like I feel like even if I did one of those “tactical situation” training weekends or something, I wouldn’t really like that gave me anything about what I actually need. What I need is how to make the right decisions. And, like I was saying in the other comments, I don’t feel like gunfire is even really any kind of solution to what I see now as the most urgent active physical threat to my safety. If it was a mob of Proud Boys? I mean, maybe. But on the other hand I probably don’t have a mob’s worth of bullets.

Again, maybe I’m wrong in all this, maybe I will regret. It’s hard to say. Maybe I will regret staying in the country at all. Let’s see.

Read the book. It’s based on a lot of research and it’s been actively used in practice in defeating a whole lot of governments a hell of a lot more repressive than Trump’s.

Whatever the merits of the violent option, however, one point is clear. By placing confidence in violent means, one has chosen the very type of struggle with which the oppressors nearly always have superiority. The dictators are equipped to apply violence overwhelmingly. However long or briefly these democrats can continue, eventually the harsh military realities usually become inescapable. The dictators almost always have superiority in military hardware, ammunition, transportation, and the size of military forces. Despite bravery, the democrats are (almost always) no match.

The maintenance of nonviolent discipline against violent opponents facilitates the workings of the four mechanisms of change in nonviolent struggle (discussed below). Nonviolent discipline is also extremely important in the process of political jiu-jitsu. In this process the stark brutality of the regime against the clearly nonviolent actionists politically rebounds against the dictators’ position, causing dissention in their own ranks as well as fomenting support for the resisters among the general population, the regime’s usual supporters, and third parties.

Emphasis is mine, that’s the answer to your question. He actually says later on that there are circumstances where violence is needed, I couldn’t quickly find that quote, but he basically just lays out the history of where and how different types of resistance action have worked.

I realize it’s not convincing when I just quote it out like that. Read the book. There are strong reasons and historical examples for everything he’s saying in those quick summaries.

Yeah. It sounds cliche, but “listen with your heart” is really accurate. She’s saying she misses the old days when America worked. That’s not wrong (I mean for white people it’s not, I would recommend not to go down that rabbit hole lol). A lot of it isn’t about what you say to her, it’s how you say it. If everything you say sounds cold and factual and correcting her, of course she’s not going to want to listen and it’s just going to be a hostile interaction.

It is tough. My experience with stuff like this is that they just live in a whole different reality, so it is hard to get a foothold. I had to work really hard at having conversations with people for whom the tone of voice and emotional intent is a huge part of how they process the information (which I think is most people). That’s not how I operate, so it was hard to keep it in mind without coming off as fake or condescending, but if you’re genuine about what you mean and focus on sort of the core of why you came to your beliefs (not the facts but the reasons why you care about the facts so much), a lot of times it comes across better. And then on top of that, you’re dealing with someone where their factual understanding of the world is off in la-la land, so it’s hard to not just lecture them or tell them what’s what.

Like that kind of thing about Reagan, my first reaction to the answer is “Yeah, and have you wondered why that hasn’t ever happened since then? Why everyone was doing okay until the late 80s and then it all went to hell and hasn’t come back? Honestly that’s what I want, is to get back to when working people had a fair shake and people could make a living. Don’t you want that? It sure as hell is not happening now under Trump…”

But again, it’s not the words, it’s the intent behind them. If you’re reasonable and you care, then it’s hard for her to take your statements hostile even if she doesn’t agree with them (honestly I can guarantee you that one conversation or even several about it will not change her mind.) But you can sort of plant seeds and then she’ll come around on her own, or if she does not then oh well.

If she is being overtly hateful on her own then it’s different. IDK what you can even do then. But mostly in my experience it is people who are so twisted up that they think the Democrats are so hateful that of course things X, Y, and Z make perfect sense and are the only humane thing to do. Mostly.

Which is why if ICE is knocking at the door, the situation is already escalated and it’s better to die and try to take a fascist with you than go to a second location.

I mean, after a certain point, yes. Solzhenitsyn talked about it, also I think some of the founding fathers had things to say about it. In our current situation, absolutely the fuck not. For one thing, it’ll get you killed obviously, for another thing, it’ll give them the pretext they’re looking for to start with all kinds of shit to all kinds of people that they can’t get away with right now. They are praying for something like this to happen. That’s why they play up anything which looks vaguely like it into something it isn’t.

Every day that goes by where ICE is the illegal mother fuckers and the people of the country are the innocents, is another day they lose a little more backing of the courts, the military, the city police, all kinds of stuff like that which is their pathway to power. I know it sounds like I’m just backing down from fighting back… all I am trying to say is that starting gunfights with the secret police is about like starting a fistfight with your abusive spouse: You’re not wrong. But also, you’re not going to win through that method.

Here is some extensive information about what does work after quite a lot of research: https://www.files.ethz.ch/isn/126900/8008_FDTD.pdf

Why I call him a neocon: he made himself an accomplice to the full-scale invasion of Iraq, defending it publicly in major publications.

Yeah, I got that. Like I said, that’s not the definition of “neocon.” I kept asking wondering if you had further justification for it, I guess I’ll stop.

the reason I even mentioned Hitchens was because you asked me a diversionary question on an unrelated topic- something you just tried to posture as being outraged at me for doing

Honestly, I was for-real curious what you thought about him based on some conversations recently, and wanted to divert from a pointless argument about the other thing. So much for that lol.

You will spend endless energy defending white dudes with nazi tattoos complicit in invasions that slaughter millions of people as long as they’re white and appeal to your ‘democratic socialist’ sensibilities.

Hey, what do you think about Stalin?

(That question actually is rhetorical, I am making a point, I think I have a pretty clear concept of what you think of him.)

weird how the more I look around you the more fashy shit I see.

You just had a pretty public crashout

Additionally you just sent me a whole rant

“Atticus told me to delete the adjectives and I’d have the facts.” -Scout

I think you should give that quote some careful study.

In fact, after digging up those links and revisiting your recent conduct, I’m questioning why I’m even continuing to talk to you at all.

Okey dokey

I really thought about this last year, took the class and everything. In the end I decided not to get one. My reasoning is this: Having a gun and not a lot of experience in what to do with it is like playing a board game for life-and-death stakes that you have never played before.

Maybe I will regret at some point in the future, but I had trouble coming up with scenarios where I wound up thinking “Thank God I pulled my gun out, now all my problems are resolved.”

Claims deep concern about bigotry against Muslims

Writes a whole massive editorial about this pretty fascinating candidate with some very salient features to his candidacy and what it means for the city and politics as a whole, but focuses wholly and exclusively on him being Muslim and specifically how Jews relate to Muslims like him

Waits 6 whole paragraphs before bringing up October 7th

Never change NYT

I can’t really offer specific advice on this situation. I don’t know. But I will say, in general separating from the person who’s victimized by propaganda just helps the propaganda spread. A lot of this stuff actually has deliberate features and habits that it tries to instill into people, to make it drive away people who might talk sense into them and make it harder for them to hear sense if someone does say it to them.

I think you should view your MIL as a victim of propaganda, similar to a drug addict or a person with significant trauma in their life. A lot of them are victims. Of course, if she’s telling you “I’m glad they’re snatching all those US citizens and deporting them to hellish nightmare prisons in other countries just because they’re Hispanic,” then maybe you want to shun her. But usually what’s happened is that they’ve gotten so twisted up in their perceptions that they think that what they’re saying and supporting is something really good, and everyone should support it. The stuff that she is victimized by is incredibly powerful, it’s not surprising to me that a lot of people get taken in by it.

Like I say it’s hard to give general advice about what you should do. But this may help you to be more gentle with her even if you are aware of the hatefulness at work in the stuff she was victimized by and have some understandably big feelings about it.

It’s a cryptic dig at Graham Platner

I mean, fighting reality to create an alternate desired reality has a longstanding success rate including in the recent past in basically every Western democracy. I am starting to agree with folks like this person that the fundamentals of modern society are becoming incompatible with the fundamentals that a society needs to have in the modern world in order to survive. I wish I knew what the fuck to do about it.

I mean, they are very bad people. Like almost all of them.

A friend of a friend of mine worked in government (for a Democrat as it turns out), and she said that they’re way worse than you think. Just on a personal level these horrifying caricatures of what a human should be, makes you want to take a shower after interacting with them type of thing. I don’t think it’s universally that way; I do think there are some people in Washington who are trying to do the right thing, but I cannot imagine that you can exist in an environment that corrupt and not have it do some level of damage to you (and drive away the people who are not cool with that level of evil). And the people who are comfortable successful creatures within that environment I think are pretty universally bad.

There is also this upsetting factor that I think a lot of the American voting populace are fine with that. Like I feel like if you tried to primary DWS by painting her as the objective monster that she is and what she did to the country, people would be fine with it and you’d go down in flames. Maybe things are changing now as the young progressives furious about their situation are getting involved in politics, but I think all of the old guard is unapologetically horrible and that’s not likely to change for as long as they are the old guard.

Hey, that reminds me: Once we survive the current crisis and move the Democrats somewhere in the vicinity of a left-wing party or replace them, let’s primary the fuck out of Debbie Wasserman Schultz. I’m sort of irritated that she still has a job.

So I’ve said this before, and this is actually a perfect example: The tell for these people is how lazy the argument is.

This dude doesn’t actually believe that this Reddit discussion about Punisher skulls under this particular picture is proof that Platner knew he had a Nazi tattoo. He doesn’t even seem to be trying very hard to make you believe it. He’s just… kind of “marking time,” it seems like. Making words go together in the vague shape of an argument, with a lot of confident aggressive energy and leading to the conclusion that puts “Platner” and “Nazi” vaguely into the same landscape, and then moving on.

I have talked with people before who I disagree with (obviously) and even on Lemmy some people who I really strongly disagree with. Usually it’s fine, we just talk. But the particular bizarro-world conversational flow of something like this exchange is very unique to a particular type of Lemmy interaction, and it always comes in conjunction with some very specific political messaging.

For other audiences, they are claiming that his Reddit comments expose him as a secret communist.

It’s exactly the same as Kamala Harris. To some audiences, she was a corporate tool who was going to sell us out to big business and make immigration worse because she loved ICE. To other audiences, she was a horrible communist who was going to kill business in America with her communism and believed in open borders. And they both bought it.

Fortunately, if Lemmy is any indication I think this kind of stuff is becoming less effective. One of the problems about Platner is that unlike Kamala Harris, he actually seems like he has genuine very good sincere things to say about what he wants to do, which makes a lot of this stuff kind of fall at the first hurdle. Hopefully.

I mean they’ve still got time to refine the strategy for a while, I’m sure they’ll keep workshopping it.