Rules To Live By In These Troubling Times
Feb. 2nd, 2025 08:30 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mallorys_cameraElon Musk’s takeover of the Treasury Department amounts to a coup. It’s like a setup for a ransomware attack.
Government-sanctioned fascists have installed hard drives at the Treasury, OPM, and GSA. They now have access to data on every taxpayer, their dependents, every business, partnership, trust, etc. etc. etc. And they have access to systems managing the flow of more than $6 trillion annually to programs like Social Security and Medicare.
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Tariffs on China, I can understand. Tariffs on Mexico? I can kinda, sorta see it—Mexico has been in the midst of a civil war for 20 years at least, (which mainstream media insists on characterizing as a drug war); unrest at the southern border = baaaaad, blah, blah, blah.
But Canada?? Canada traditionally has been an ally, a close ally. Aside from wonderful things like maple sugar & processed French fries, Canada sells oil & hydroelectricity to the U.S. Trump has only slapped a 10% tariff on Canadian energy—I guess figuring Canada has no one else to sell it to. I wonder if that’s true?
Fun factoid: Around 70% of U.S. chicken feed fertilizer comes from Canada. Guess what Canadian tariffs are gonna do to the price of eggs?
I suppose Canadian tariffs might be some kind of blugeony negotiation tactic?
Only what is Trump “negotiating” for exactly?
And then there are the ICE raids.
I well remember my first trip to a Central American country, wayyyyy back in the Jurassic. How shocked I was to see armed guards in camouflage fatigues with huge machine guns patrolling the streets and standing outside every bank and cambio.
Fast-forward 55 years & here they are in the U.S. of Ay!!!
Above photo was shot in Ithaca.
For now, let’s forget how ridiculous (and unnecessarily costly!) it is to dispatch five heavily armed men to snatch one undocumented immigrant.
In this particular instance, the undocumented immigrant had been released from jail three days previously. Before he was released, local law enforcement had reached out to Immigration and Customs Enforcement to ask, Are you coming to pick this guy up?
ICE preferred to ignore this request because Ithaca is a self-styled sancturary city, and they relished the photo op of heavily armed government representatives marching around a sanctuary city.
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Here are some rules to live by in these troubling times. General recommendations for creating confusion and lowering morale:
1. In every interaction with a government representative, act stupid.
2. If questioned, give lengthy, incomprehensible answers to all questions. Make their job suck. Waste their time.
3. Use those hotlines! Report imaginary aliens to ICE and other police organizations.
4. Cry or get hysterical any time you have to interact with a government representative.
5. Boycott any entity associated with the current regime. The lists of corporations that have kissed the ring by donating to Trump’s inauguration or backwalking diversity efforts within their own organization are all out there; I don’t have to reproduce them here. The two most useful boycotts: (1) Do not order a fucking thing off Amazon EVER and (2) Replace your PC operating system with Linux. (Apple is actually in a weird position here: Yes, they did contribute to Trump’s inauguration, but they remain committed to diversity initiatives internally, so I am in Wait & See mode with Apple.)
###
In non-shitstorm newZ:
The Working Families Party interviewed RTT for half an hour yesterday as part of its endorsement-vetting process.
They Zoomed the interview for the public, so I got to watch.
And RTT was fuckin’ amazing. I mean, brilliant answers to the questions they posed, and AOC levels of charisma. I was really impressed, and no, I am not just saying that because I’m his mother.
If anybody can lure GenZ away from the neo-fascist pied pipers, RTT can.
###
Also, it dawned on me sometime yesterday that LiveJournal might actually be useful for Resistance organization because LJ’s housed on Russian servers—giving some impermeability to Elon Musk’s spybots.
Government-sanctioned fascists have installed hard drives at the Treasury, OPM, and GSA. They now have access to data on every taxpayer, their dependents, every business, partnership, trust, etc. etc. etc. And they have access to systems managing the flow of more than $6 trillion annually to programs like Social Security and Medicare.
###
Tariffs on China, I can understand. Tariffs on Mexico? I can kinda, sorta see it—Mexico has been in the midst of a civil war for 20 years at least, (which mainstream media insists on characterizing as a drug war); unrest at the southern border = baaaaad, blah, blah, blah.
But Canada?? Canada traditionally has been an ally, a close ally. Aside from wonderful things like maple sugar & processed French fries, Canada sells oil & hydroelectricity to the U.S. Trump has only slapped a 10% tariff on Canadian energy—I guess figuring Canada has no one else to sell it to. I wonder if that’s true?
Fun factoid: Around 70% of U.S. chicken feed fertilizer comes from Canada. Guess what Canadian tariffs are gonna do to the price of eggs?
I suppose Canadian tariffs might be some kind of blugeony negotiation tactic?
Only what is Trump “negotiating” for exactly?
And then there are the ICE raids.
I well remember my first trip to a Central American country, wayyyyy back in the Jurassic. How shocked I was to see armed guards in camouflage fatigues with huge machine guns patrolling the streets and standing outside every bank and cambio.
Fast-forward 55 years & here they are in the U.S. of Ay!!!
Above photo was shot in Ithaca.
For now, let’s forget how ridiculous (and unnecessarily costly!) it is to dispatch five heavily armed men to snatch one undocumented immigrant.
In this particular instance, the undocumented immigrant had been released from jail three days previously. Before he was released, local law enforcement had reached out to Immigration and Customs Enforcement to ask, Are you coming to pick this guy up?
ICE preferred to ignore this request because Ithaca is a self-styled sancturary city, and they relished the photo op of heavily armed government representatives marching around a sanctuary city.
###
Here are some rules to live by in these troubling times. General recommendations for creating confusion and lowering morale:
1. In every interaction with a government representative, act stupid.
2. If questioned, give lengthy, incomprehensible answers to all questions. Make their job suck. Waste their time.
3. Use those hotlines! Report imaginary aliens to ICE and other police organizations.
4. Cry or get hysterical any time you have to interact with a government representative.
5. Boycott any entity associated with the current regime. The lists of corporations that have kissed the ring by donating to Trump’s inauguration or backwalking diversity efforts within their own organization are all out there; I don’t have to reproduce them here. The two most useful boycotts: (1) Do not order a fucking thing off Amazon EVER and (2) Replace your PC operating system with Linux. (Apple is actually in a weird position here: Yes, they did contribute to Trump’s inauguration, but they remain committed to diversity initiatives internally, so I am in Wait & See mode with Apple.)
###
In non-shitstorm newZ:
The Working Families Party interviewed RTT for half an hour yesterday as part of its endorsement-vetting process.
They Zoomed the interview for the public, so I got to watch.
And RTT was fuckin’ amazing. I mean, brilliant answers to the questions they posed, and AOC levels of charisma. I was really impressed, and no, I am not just saying that because I’m his mother.
If anybody can lure GenZ away from the neo-fascist pied pipers, RTT can.
###
Also, it dawned on me sometime yesterday that LiveJournal might actually be useful for Resistance organization because LJ’s housed on Russian servers—giving some impermeability to Elon Musk’s spybots.
no subject
Date: 2025-02-02 04:03 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-02-02 04:07 pm (UTC)I have political reasons for switching platforms. I oppose Russia's policy toward LGBQ. But you came over because Idol changed platforms, no? No reason for you to stay on DW.
no subject
Date: 2025-02-02 04:11 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-02-02 11:40 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-02-02 11:57 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-02-03 05:15 pm (UTC)Yes. I'm in a state of shock how quickly and completely a democracy unravels when you let someone like Musk off the leash.
Will we have the guts to stand up to him in this country? I doubt it very much. I can foresee the UK electing another of his puppets five years down the line.
no subject
Date: 2025-02-03 05:19 pm (UTC)The American enlightenment experiment is essentially over.