I’m worried about that. I’m hearing a lot of people either giving into despair or openly discussing what I’ll call “illegal opposition”. I really like a lot of Americans and I don’t want to see war and/or oppression hit. But I’m bracing for it, as I think a lot of nations are.
Threaten this, finger-wag that, “concerned” legal expert opinions… As a Canadian looking in, your “opposition” leaders better start getting results quickly because Trump’s administration is demolishing your country’s organizations and checks/balances VERY quickly. If official opposition through established means doesn’t deliver wins in the near future I’m worried about what happens when half your population loses faith in legal ways of resisting. I don’t want to see either a civil war or an unchecked dictatorship a few hundred kilometers south of me.
For people who claim to love the Founding Fathers, the current US government sure is speedrunning the death of the Father’s vision of a nation free from religious control and without monarch levels of unchecked power.
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I never thought you were being inflammatory or attacking me, but thank you for an apology/clarification even if it wasn’t necessary. I thought your response provided valuable perspective, and reminded us all that people are a diverse group that defies blanket categorization. I asked for your feedback because I legitimately didn’t know how to fold that into my post, which as I said was the truth of what I experienced. I also wanted to help divorce criticism of people like Elon Musk from “accusations” of mental disability, which I don’t feel should be an accusation or “gotcha”.
After over 25 years of work of varying intensity with psychiatrists, I’m legally permanently disabled because of mental illness and I have lived on permanent disability for several years. I’m lucky in that I’m physically and mentally capable, so most people won’t even know until they are close enough to me to start learning about my lifestyle and day-to-day experience. Even so I’ve experienced a fair bit of both well-meaning and malicious misunderstanding. Those misunderstandings are of course worse and more consistent for people with developmental and intellectual disabilities, and I don’t want to be part of that. That’s why I’m taking our conversation seriously.
I’m not going to delete my post because I stand beside what I said, but I did include the following edit: “Edit: Following discussion below, I think it would be right and humanizing to add a reminder to myself and others. Although my time with that particular group was positive, the mentally disabled are people like any of us and each will be different in terms of friendliness, happiness, and social capability.”
I don’t think that short addition will interrupt the flow or message of my post, and will address some of the context you’ve provided.
That’s an interesting addition and I have no reason to doubt you. It’s quite possible the people I saw regularly were there exactly because they were inclined to be friendly and happy. It probably also helps that they were closely accompanied by professionals. I can only comment on my experience with them, and what I wrote was accurate to that. I mean, one guy who was more physically able would do curls with me and call me Superman and I called him Batman. The reason I started talking to them is one really thin girl stopped while doing laps in a group and told me she loved me. I still smile thinking about those moments.
I honestly don’t know if I agree that it’s harmful to relay my couple of years interacting with the intellectually disabled as I did. It’s definitely the truth of my experience. At the same time I can completely believe it’s not the whole truth, and varies by individual. After all, I would only spend 10-30 minutes working out while they were nearby before I moved on. I’d definitely continue to insist that even the nasty folks aren’t doing anywhere near as much damage to global society as Elon Musk though.
Do you think I should change my post? And if so - how, given what I’ve written in this reply? Edit: after thinking about it, perhaps your followup will be enough to provide context?
This is an insult to people that would have been given that label in those days. Those folks are some of the happiest, friendliest people I’ve ever met. Until a couple years ago I used to work out a city gym and interact with a group of the intellectually disabled who would come in for exercise. They told me they loved me, worked out with me, laughed with me and they were one of the best parts of gym time.
Edit: Following discussion below, I think it would be right and humanizing to add a reminder to myself and others. Although my time with that particular group was very positive, the mentally disabled are people like any of us and each will be different in terms of friendliness, happiness, and social capability.
Musk runs propaganda platforms, fights unions, visits Epstein islands, buys elections, and is THE example of the oligarchy that is in a very real way ruining the world and destroying hope. He has no right to be given a label that would historically place him in the same category as the people I knew for years.
Occupational safety may be punk rock, but breaking forklifting rules is early-2010’s dubstep.
There’s definitely value in not constantly being tethered to a device reminding you how many steps you’ve taken, e-mails, etc. Also I’m reminded me of a quote:
“Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the western spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun. Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-two million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue green planet whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea.” ― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
As much as I don’t want regular people to suffer, this is like hearing about someone who thought everyone who didn’t drink bleach was stupid and they were going to prove something by downing it. At no point was that coin a good idea for anyone except the ones who got on early and guessed the right time to dump it, and that information was very freely available.
I’d say maybe losing a lot of their own money will finally teach people not to trust Trump, but a) we are so far past the point of trust based on logic and facts that I doubt it and b) it’s too late anyways, they’ve already given him monarch levels of power and money. Plus Trump will probably blame the crash on malicious immigrants blatantly and black women slyly (DEI) and his base will lap it up.