That would be a strong argument if I had suggested anything remotely close to not vocalizing our dissent.

Yah me too but I’m talking about the social discourse between people, towards people, not governments. There is a hateful sentiment spreading and if you haven’t seen it yet, you will. It’s just ramping up and it’s all by design.

There’s a lot of hate I see even here on Lemmy, with the sentiment of “You stupid Americans are getting what you voted for” kind of blanket aspersions. I’m fully aware that most of them are shills or astroturfers trying to incite back-and-forth anger, but it seems to work very easily and ends up in a lot of “no YOU!” arguments across social media.

Traditionally the State of the Union has been a yearly “all sides come together to get on the same page” kind of affair, it’s supposed to highlight the importance of country over politics, and it’s where the whole country gets the president’s agenda going forward so we can decide what to support or oppose. It was originally a stately and important moment in our country.

This tradition has had some drama and wild swings in the past but I can’t remember in my decades here if there’s been a sizeable number of legislators and representatives actually protesting the entire thing, people usually go there even if it’s just to “boo” and make a scene and get their clips in on social media.

Honestly it’s completely nothing and pointless right now. The State of the Union means nothing in this administration, the protesting by not attending means nothing. Trump could get up there and scream at the country that we’re going to start mining for chocolate on the moon and people are broadly going to shrug because next week he’ll be screaming that we need to start bombing wind-farms.

By his logic

Nobody here is using that shit.

Logic that is.

This is meant to do what it always did, rile up stupid hicks against a manufactured enemy and provide leverage for politicians who want to succeed on the backs of a fearful mob of hicks.

“Just because your brain gives you loading screen tips, doesn’t mean those tips are accurate, sometimes your brain lies to you! Learn to analyze your thoughts and feelings before charging into a mission!”

Actual secrets are kept secret from people who have any chance of exposing secrets. There is no real such thing as overriding authority in matters of national security and technology that could turn wars. They keep that shit wrapped up until a situation gets so dire that there’s nothing left to lose.

Add to that, the commercialization of military tech, so that there are likely 100 different tech companies with huge secret programs and technology being tested who have no idea what each of the others are doing, and sure as shit won’t share anything “under oath” with congress or anyone else.

The “aliens” narrative has been a very convenient narrative for them too, just like how Q-anon was built as a misdirection from the actual child-sex cabal because nobody is going to take the claims seriously when they sound like the deranged ravings of conspiracy nuts.

The idea that we can have a “document reveal” or testimony that leads to actual conclusive anything is as absurd as the idea that we can have a document leak about Epstein that leads to anyone in power facing criminal charges.

Now now, it will also be “experts” clawing to speak in front of Congress like Avi Loeb and miscellaneous book-sellers and youtube personalities.

The ship filled with interstellar face-eating parasitic spiders parked in the middle:

“Alright boys, we got a 25 light year jump in either direction, which ones we wanna hit first?”

Nobody is coming, there is no opposition.

Get your people together and talk to your neighbors. Get armed. Rice and beans, and generally about 2 weeks of food and water.

Get active with the voting in your state and volunteer if you can, even if all you can do is document efforts at voter suppression, you still need to be there and be involved with voting in your town, your county and your state. People like Susan Collins only remain in power because people in states don’t care nearly enough about who represents them in either local or federal house and senate.

Either delete your social media or radically edit it to reduce personal, identifying information.

Susan Collins has two modes:

Empowering nazi fascists proudly.

Frowning and wagging her finger while empowering nazi fascists (proudly.)

A few of them made an effort to keep up appearances during early rulings, but then they realized that democracy was falling so they went whole-hog with empowering fascism, and now we’re approaching what looks like a brutal mid-term sweep so the judges are backing off again from overt capitulation… we sure wouldn’t want the new house and senate to introduce bills to reform Supreme Court, right?

Good people:

• Take time to listen to others even if it’s something they don’t agree with, they want to understand the other person before they want to performatively argue.

• Treat others with kindness, and everyone equally, no matter their age, race or social standing.

• Make sure people are treated fairly by others even if it’s very small gestures like noticing you said something nobody heard and calling attention to it.

• Care about how they make other people. I mean, it should be obvious but apparently a LOT of people took all the wrong lessons from their saturday morning cartoons and care more about being emotionally vindicated and somehow still think they’re the good ones, a tendency that covers every side of every population or group.

Honestly, fuck yeah. I feel bad for the countless residents who depend on tourism, but gambling is a scourge upon the Earth and needs to die already, that money doesn’t help anyone but casino owners who are, once again, giant corporate whales who soak up money and never return it to the system.

Vegas may be dying but something has to kill the online sites also.

People aren’t even drinking anymore.

No possible way it could be maintained. Youtube allows anyone with an email address to make a channel, and AI tools are cheap or free, and people can make bank by getting their shitty AI-narrated fake documentaries in front of enough people, so there are thousands popping up and getting suggested on people’s feeds every single day.

I also don’t know how you could prevent abuse of such an app from users reporting channels that just talk about AI or even completely bogus campaigning from hateful groups.

Nothing has actually changed between the people of the two nations, but Trump instinctively knows that he can divide people by creating conflict so he succeeded in getting America’s stupid masses and Canada’s stupid masses to start playing his tribalism games.

And ya’ll on both sides of the fence are playing into the game willingly because you both feel righteous and better than the other.

Nobody is going to care until 10 years down the road when everything is even shittier and our whole society is literally falling apart and crumbling for lack of qualified engineers and the like, then people will be saying “Why didn’t people do something?”

But something else huge and terrible will also be happening at that time, which people will be ignoring also.

What happens next?

Everyone pulls out their phones and starts scrolling for what’s new and trending.

That’s half of USAID’s budget.

Cutting USAID is by far the most heneious and evil thing Trump has done in his entire time invading our space, and it gets maybe the least attention. The death-toll is already in the hundreds of thousands, immediate consequence of a performative decision that cost us next to nothing compared to other spending.

Hundreds of thousands of children, of families, grandmothers and brothers and sisters, people’s wives and husbands and newborn babies. All just people just trying to survive a harsh world, cut off from medicine and nutrition and safe water and dying slowly in their family homes, tents or streets.

We are never going to see more than maybe a Frontline documentary on how horrific this act was, but the fact that we have a world that allows for one person who can just sign a squiggle on paper and watch millions of people die for fun should have us on the streets with high explosive devices.