We are living at a time of cartoon villains but we don’t have cartoon heroes.

  • Snapz@lemmy.world
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    6 hours ago

    “You see,” my colleague went on, "one doesn’t see exactly where or how to move. Believe me, this is true. Each act, each occasion, is worse than the last, but only a little worse. You wait for the next and the next. You wait for one great shocking occasion, thinking that others, when such a shock comes, will join with you in resisting somehow. You don’t want to act, or even talk, alone; you don’t want to ‘go out of your way to make trouble.’ Why not?—Well, you are not in the habit of doing it. And it is not just fear, fear of standing alone, that restrains you; it is also genuine uncertainty.

    "Uncertainty is a very important factor, and, instead of decreasing as time goes on, it grows. Outside, in the streets, in the general community, ‘everyone’ is happy. One hears no protest, and certainly sees none. You know, in France or Italy there would be slogans against the government painted on walls and fences; in Germany, outside the great cities, perhaps, there is not even this. In the university community, in your own community, you speak privately to your colleagues, some of whom certainly feel as you do; but what do they say? They say, ‘It’s not so bad’ or ‘You’re seeing things’ or ‘You’re an alarmist.’

    "And you are an alarmist. You are saying that this must lead to this, and you can’t prove it. These are the beginnings, yes; but how do you know for sure when you don’t know the end, and how do you know, or even surmise, the end? On the one hand, your enemies, the law, the regime, the Party, intimidate you. On the other, your colleagues pooh-pooh you as pessimistic or even neurotic. You are left with your close friends, who are, naturally, people who have always thought as you have.

    "But your friends are fewer now. Some have drifted off somewhere or submerged themselves in their work. You no longer see as many as you did at meetings or gatherings. Informal groups become smaller; attendance drops off in little organizations, and the organizations themselves wither. Now, in small gatherings of your oldest friends, you feel that you are talking to yourselves, that you are isolated from the reality of things. This weakens your confidence still further and serves as a further deterrent to—to what? It is clearer all the time that, if you are going to do anything, you must make an occasion to do it, and then you are obviously a troublemaker. So you wait, and you wait.

    "But the one great shocking occasion, when tens or hundreds or thousands will join with you, never comes. That’s the difficulty. If the last and worst act of the whole regime had come immediately after the first and smallest, thousands, yes, millions would have been sufficiently shocked—if, let us say, the gassing of the Jews in ’43 had come immediately after the ‘German Firm’ stickers on the windows of non-Jewish shops in ’33. But of course this isn’t the way it happens. In between come all the hundreds of little steps, some of them imperceptible, each of them preparing you not to be shocked by the next. Step C is not so much worse than Step B, and, if you did not make a stand at Step B, why should you at Step C? And so on to Step D.

    "And one day, too late, your principles, if you were ever sensible of them, all rush in upon you. The burden of self-deception has grown too heavy, and some minor incident, in my case my little boy, hardly more than a baby, saying ‘Jewish swine,’ collapses it all at once, and you see that everything, everything, has changed and changed completely under your nose. The world you live in—your nation, your people—is not the world you were born in at all. The forms are all there, all untouched, all reassuring, the houses, the shops, the jobs, the mealtimes, the visits, the concerts, the cinema, the holidays. But the spirit, which you never noticed because you made the lifelong mistake of identifying it with the forms, is changed. Now you live in a world of hate and fear, and the people who hate and fear do not even know it themselves; when everyone is transformed, no one is transformed. Now you live in a system which rules without responsibility even to God. The system itself could not have intended this in the beginning, but in order to sustain itself it was compelled to go all the way.

    Copyright notice: Excerpt from pages 166-73 of They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933-45 by Milton Mayer

    • pigup@lemmy.world
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      5 hours ago

      Cool so it’s all hopeless and nothing will save us. they have already won, got it.

      • Snapz@lemmy.world
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        4 hours ago

        It will be what we make it. For now, stop performing on social media though and try to listen and think a bit. We take in history and try to learn from it. That’s the first step.

        You’re scared, that’s fine. Take strength from knowing that this isn’t brand new. Doesn’t mean it’s easy or the good guys “win”, but means people have survived this before, fascist regimes have toppled, just not in the US yet. So we’ll see. We’ll hope there’s less death, less destruction, but there already is and will be some.

        It’s okay for you to be scared. There’s probably SOMETHING you can be doing to help though. Take some time and consider what that might be.

  • oyo@lemm.ee
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    8 hours ago

    Contempt of court. Immediate arrest. I don’t care if he’s pardoned. Keep doing it.

      • oyo@lemm.ee
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        40 minutes ago

        The judge needs to hold Rubio in contempt of court for defying his ruling. And do the same for anyone else culpable.

  • Riskable@programming.dev
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    1 day ago

    Reminder: The Bill of Rights applies to all persons living or residing in the United States. Whether or not you’re a citizen is irrelevant. Green card, visa, no visa, etc doesn’t matter.

    Everyone gets freedom of speech in the US. Everyone.

    • minnow@lemmy.world
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      24 hours ago

      The Trump administration is operating on a “it’s not legal/constitutionally protected until a judge says it is” and if they punish you before the judge says you don’t deserve punishment, oh well!

      So in this case, because we don’t have any case law saying that deportation is an infringement of the 1st amendment, Trump gets to say it isn’t until a judge says otherwise. At which point maybe Trump will obey the court, or (probably) not.

      It’s bullshit and backwards, but that’s what we’re up against.

      • Ernest@lemm.ee
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        7 hours ago

        and if they punish you before the judge says you don’t deserve punishment, oh well!

        the horrifying thing is on multiple occasions, they’ve (we’ve? it’s our government) attempted to use this logic to execute people. Some of which we know for sure are innocent.

    • Phoenicianpirate@lemm.eeOP
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      1 day ago

      They don’t give a rat’s ass about freedom of speech. They never did. And the 2nd amendment for them was about being brownshirts with their own personal firearms.

    • atzanteol@sh.itjust.works
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      24 hours ago

      True, with a “but”. The secretary of state has the near unquestioned right to declare that a permanent resident alien represents a threat to the nation.

      Let’s hope nobody abuses that!

  • eddanja@lemmy.world
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    1 day ago

    The thing I don’t get is that a number of years ago, Trump made fun of Rubio in public about how much he sweats. He was splashing water from his bottle like, “It’s Rubio…”

    And now the spineless Marco Rubio is licking the taint of Trump as Secretary of State.

    • lemmingthelemmers@lemmy.world
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      9 hours ago

      Let me help you.

      ”Sheldon Adelson is looking to give big dollars to Rubio because he feels he can mold him into his perfect little puppet. I agree!” Trump tweeted. - 2015

      "The Israeli-American billionaire and casino owner has become a kingmaker in conservative American politics, following in the footsteps of her late husband, Sheldon Adelson, who died in 2021.

      Her $100m donation to President-elect Donald Trump’s campaign was a watershed moment. With Trump’s victory, many eyes are on Miriam and her possible influence on his future policy decisions, most notably on Israel." -2025

      Anybody paying attention yet?

    • Jo Miran@lemmy.ml
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      1 day ago

      What exactly don’t you get? Trump only employs groveling bootlickers. If you have a spine you are automatically disqualified.

        • dan1101@lemm.ee
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          9 hours ago

          Two narcissists who happen to be traveling the same direction and are using each other for a while.

        • Asafum@feddit.nl
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          1 day ago

          Elon is different, he bought his position to the tune of something like $200 million “donated” to the election fund. Trump knows he needs Muskrat and his propaganda machine to be on his side, plus he serves as a nice distraction with DOGE.

        • Daggity@lemm.ee
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          1 day ago

          He’s trump’s boss. Just look at trump selling Tesla’s for him the other day.

    • teawrecks@sopuli.xyz
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      20 hours ago

      It makes sense once you recognize that none of these guys actually believe or feel anything. They’re all running a calculated sociopathic algorithm to maximize their own power.

      The only reason any of them were anti-Trump at any point in the past was because they didn’t believe it would help their political career. Now they’re they’re all anti-reality/pro-fascism for the same reason.

      Just like late-stage capitalism, we’ve set up a system that encourages this behavior. If you compare an honest politician vs one willing to say or do whatever is needed to secure power, the latter will always come out on top. Which is where we find ourselves.

      If we somehow develop a forcing function to disincentivize this behavior, all of them will flip instantly, saying, “I had to. I didn’t agree with anything Trump was doing. I was only doing it because if I didn’t, someone worse would take my spot. Votes pleeeeaase 🫴”

  • Hobbes_Dent@lemmy.world
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    1 day ago

    Y’all really need to change that anthem.

    Home of the something I dunno. Stupid? Nazi? Nazi rhymes I suppose.

  • ZeroCool@lemmy.ca
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    1 day ago

    "Let’s dispel once and for all with this fiction that Barack Obama Marco Rubio doesn’t know what he’s doing. He knows exactly what he’s doing.”