So they claim it is NRA country, and that they are rattlesnakes that one should not tread on.
Add this together and deal with rattlesnakes the American way: Simply shoot them.
Absolute dumbasses. The lowest achievers from high school, never left town, and signed up for Facebook one day, and now here we are.
In my state, claiming to be part of a militia, unless you’ve been specifically called up by the Governor, or activated by the feds somehow or another, is a felony.
These groups needs to be considered terrorists, their assets seized, and their presence made illegal. Their goal is the violent oppression of minorities in violation of the Constitution.
Long time ago the Supreme Court said advocating to overthrow the government is protected First Amendment speech, and that made sense when I learned about it but now I think it was a mistake, said from a place of great comfort.
I’ve met Trump-voting conservatives that flat-out said they believe Communism could work.
They’re people too, with all the nuance that comes with it.
So funny, the proud boys guy was of Mexican descent, the guy in this article seems of middle eastern descent, can they really be this dumb and support white supremacy ideology?
There’s still Slavic nazis.
Remember, we outnumber these cunts.
But do we out-gun them?
I don’t think any civilians should be able to own firearms, but those MAGA cunts own them and you can be damn sure I’m not going to let them get one up on me.
Everyone, buy a gun, train thoroughly, and don’t let these assholes bully us into letting them run the country.
Unfortunately this is the way.
This isn’t a game, the police will not protect us, that’s been shown. They’ll happily club an old lady to the ground and shoot you in the face with rubber bullets if you get near them. I tell my friends as often as I can now is the time. Get a gun or two (a long one a short one) and learn how to use them. Learn some basic medic training (you just need to know how to stablize somebody). Start networking with like-minded people around you. Learn how to rely on yourself and your community. The rightwing wants to install a theocracy in the U.S. in disregard of whatever personal freedoms you hold dear and they’re very close to accomplishing it.
Everyone, buy a gun, train thoroughly, and don’t let these assholes bully us into letting them run the country.
Yeah, because if there’s one thing we know, it’s that more guns will solve all the problems.
The only ones to blame for the rise of fascism are the fascists. They choose to support an ideology of bigotry and genocide. They choose to act that way.
All you’re doing is enabling them by making them out to look like victims when they are anything but.
For the last 40 years, boomers have had a stranglehold on government power. And you know what they say. The good die young. What’s left in charge are some of the most distilled evil, brain addled geriatrics. With little in the way of actual ideas about solutions. Only clinging desperately to power and relevance. To the detriment of everyone else.
This is such a tiring generalization. Boomers, like the rest of Americans, had been detached from politics for much of their lives. You realize most every president has been near a 50/50 split for vote? It’s not like Reagan won with 80% of the vote, which the majority voting age at that time was boomers.
Who has a stranglehold on government power is corporations. Fight the real enemy, not the people who for much of their lives (at least half of them) were trying to do the right thing.
I suggest we choose to fight at all. Which we haven’t. Somehow for the last 6 years we all continue to talk most and act least.
The simple fact is if everyone who was capable of voting did vote in their interests we would easily move the US left (actually getting us to somewhere center/left-center as there is no left whatsoever in America). Republicans would go away, we could move past Democrats, and directly address corruption.
But, “their” system of making people think voting doesn’t matter (plus of course voter repression and gerrymandering) and keeping people focused on shit that doesn’t matter (like ageism) is working, as it has for decades.
I see “anti-government” and “against government tyranny” in this story a lot, but these people are NOT anti-government. They’re very pro-government, as long as the government uses its power to enforce their beliefs. They’re very willing to use the power of government to enforce the laws as they see them, and ignore the laws they don’t like.
Seriously. The monarchy they want is a form of government.
They don’t want monarchy, they want feudalism.
No, the people cheering for their spray tanned leader to have absolute power and to be above the law want monarchy, not feudalism. That’s literally one of the cited differences between the two.
As a Democrat from upstate NY let me tell you why the rural areas are dark red: NYC seems to be all that matters.
NYC matters a whole lot fucking more than Mechanicville. What do they even want?
NYC has a shit ton of economic and cultural output. It matters.
I get that people might feel bad that they’re seen as irrelevant or uninteresting. But, uh, tough?
All citizens deserve representation. Taxation without representation is why the USA was founded in revolt against the British.
They literally have representatives. At federal and state levels. And presumably local, too.
its the same on the other coast… Seattle and the i5 area are what keep Washington blue. There are some deep red parts of Washington state and its frightening. As someone that looks like my father (Anglo Saxon) but identifies with my mother (Lakota), it is a surreal experience sometimes. People are fucking crazy and the people who think they are powerful (the deep red) because they are loud are going to have a very rude awakening if there is a violent revolution. They do not have the numbers to repel an angry populace that is fleeing the cities.
That’s the entire planet. Metropolitan places are metropolitan. Homogeneous places are filled with ignorance and prejudice.
At least 50% of NY’s population lives within 50 miles of NYC and I wouldn’t be surprised to find out its closer to 65% or 70%. Of course it gets the most attention. I get why people living outside that area would be upset but they cant be surprised.
You see the same thing in every state with a large metro area. There’s always griping from western and central MA but the fact is 75% of the population lives in the Boston metro area.
The issue, addressed in the article, is that these rural areas used to have industry that gave people a sense of purpose. Now the choices are basically move to a city, die of a heroin overdose, or join a right wing militia. We need to give these people something to do that’s beneficial and where they feel they’re contributing to their communities, otherwise, they’re going to be wooed by groups with ulterior motives that dress their goals up in rhetoric of service and cohesion.
used to have industry that gave [men] a sense of purpose
They need gender-affirming care.
I mean we have crumbling infrastructure. You could probably start some sort of government program to have people work on that. Like the whole pipeline from education through training, building, maintaining, researching.
Unfortunately a chunk of the us is pathologically opposed to that sort of thing.
The exact people we’re supposed to be coddling and hand feeding, specifically.
I’m sympathetic to economic concerns, that sympathy lessens alot when you reject any offered solutions to scream “coal or bust” (or relevant absent industry here.) That sympathy dissipates completely once you decide to blame gays and blacks and start spending all your “I ain’t got no money” cash on Maga gear and throwing faschie parades.
It’s almost as if it’s not about economics at all 🤔
I’m sympathetic to economic concerns, that sympathy lessens alot when you reject any offered solutions to scream “coal or bust” (or relevant absent industry here.)
The problem with this statement is that liberal/left/environmentalist forces have been waging a war on coal for decades now, and winning. This is the root of the rural working class turn against the Democrats. We had nearly 200k coal workers in the 80s, and now it’s down to under 50k. That’s people directly employed in coal, not to mention those employed in the thriving rural economies they supported. Millions of people have been impacted by the decline of coal, and right or wrong, they perceive Democrats as responsible for both the decline, and the failure to support the people who were impacted.
At this point you have generational poverty as a result of the closure of coal mines and plants, and you have kids growing up who don’t know what it used to be like, they only know the abandoned buildings and drug addiction they grow up surrounded by. I’m not saying we have to tolerate the negative attitudes that fester in these situations, but we do have to understand where they come from, and we certainly shouldn’t let it stop us from trying to make things better. If people have positive, productive things to do, they won’t spend all their time on the internet finding reasons to hate their neighbors, and that facet of the problem will solve itself over time.
a. Coal sucks. It was never going to last forever. It’s horrible for the environment at like every stage.
b. 200k people is nothing. There are almost that many people living in my neighborhood of Brooklyn alone. I’m not keen on them having so much more political power than here.
Mining for coal again is just a non starter. There’s only so much in the ground to begin with, and a lot of people don’t want the environment to be damaged that badly.
There are things we could do as a society to make things better. Probably none of the good ideas come from the right wing. Basic income or government work programs would probably help. Letting the free market decide will just lead to people being exploited and the environment savaged.
People love to make the “empty land should vote” argument by harping that urban areas “don’t care about rural needs” but also love to ignore that anytime the rural areas are consulted the response is always basically “coal or coup” or “ban f**s or coup.”
I’m tired of these various right wing interests absolutely refusing to engage with any part of the process then crying that they’re being oppressed because they don’t get their extreme demands met, and I’m tired of people making excuses for them as they march in the streets to undo the whole country.
200k people is nothing.
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What a horrible, neoliberal thing to say.
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It’s not just 200k people, it’s hundreds of thousands more that lost their livelihoods when the main economic driver in their area shut down.
I’m not arguing for coal (it’s 2024, why are we still using it at all?), I’m arguing against abandoning an entire population of people who made their livings off of it and its cascading economic effects.
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It’s funny how the enlightened centrists who attack leftists (no matter how varied) as single issue voter, big govt nuts, and insensitive are always the same people who think “if we don’t use big govt to ban all energy except coal and force companies to reopen all the mines no matter how problematic then they have every right to overthrow the government.”
Why don’t we try that with a leftist position? “Institute single payer Healthcare so every citizen has access to healthcare scot free or else we’re going to overthrow the government?”
Y’all would SCREECH about it being economically impossible, brand us as terrorists, and be ITCHING to gun us down. But hey the people who just want to kill gays and own blacks again, they get a pass and we need to cowtow to their demands or else we deserve it.
You seem to be arguing with me, but I agree with almost everything you say. In particular stuff like:
Why don’t we try that with a leftist position? “Institute single payer Healthcare so every citizen has access to healthcare scot free or else we’re going to overthrow the government?”
Corporate merger? How about we start with nationalize both companies, guillotine the executives, and hand it all over to unions?
We shouldn’t compromise on getting rid of coal, but we should make sure the people and communities affected are taken care of in the aftermath. Or should have, anyway, that ship has basically sailed. It’s the same neoliberal psychopathy that turned the post-industrial northeast and midwest into a war zone in the 60s-80s.
