Thinking about the USA right now too much doesn’t lead to any good sleep for me at all right now. Because there’s bad things happening to good people there. I feel awful for the actual decent people that share a country with cruel and dogmatic clowns. People who probably live next door to someone who voted to ensure their rights get taken away and their lives become even more miserable.
I honestly struggle to come to terms with the fact so many people are still so cruel and backwards. It’s not the stupidity that’s the main problem, it’s the malicious intent and desire to turn everyone into a goose stepping clone. And how easily people are turned into goose stepping clones. Conned by reality stars and drug addicted tech bros, what a joke. I think it’s part stupidity and part the fact that these people really are just malicious assholes, so they could’ve been convinced into this by a talking toilet brush mascot.
I feel sorry for the intelligent and empathic, and the people who dare to live lives that are true to themselves without dogma who have to live in a country with the stupid and selfish, and the people who want to impose their narrow minded puritanical views onto everyone else with force and cruelty.
I’ll be sleeping like a baby when the goose stepping clowns are all dying of some easily preventable disease that they could’ve vaccinated for but right now there’s nothing comforting about what’s going on there.
I would like to visit the USA. There’s still a lot of good people there and I’m sure lots of things to do & enjoy. Preferably at a time when that orange bastard isn’t around trying to burn everything to the ground.
Ignoring the policial.climate, it really is a lovely country with diverse subcultures, multitudinous biomes, and regional cuisines & local delicacies in every corner.
But for the time being, please stay safe and don’t take the risk.
I like living in the USA.
Like…even right now?
No, not right now but its still not the worst place to live. The administration is doing their best to make it the worst place though.
It’s been less than 1/8th of the term. We have 7 more of these and some change to go. Saying it’s not the worst place to live right now is like noticing a little bit of gangrene on your pinkie and thinking “it’s not so bad.”
What specifically has the administration done to make it the worst place to live? Im curious.
You mean aside from attacks on trans people, immigrants, citizens who they suspect are immigrants, starting to make a list of autistic people (probably to put us in camps later), wrecking the economy, taking away entitlements to give to his rich cronies, and emboldening white supremacists and neonazis with his audible nazi dog whistles and general behavior?
Oh, see i don’t give a shit about most of that. If the economy is reflected in the stock market, according to my 401k at least, we are definitely on our way back and onto better things.
Ah, so you’re just heartless and/or conservative, got it.
Definitely a Republican 100%. I don’t believe that supporting the delusions of the mentally ill makes me heartless, it makes me honest and realistic.
Not the person you asked, but I have answers.
A friend of mine depends on government assistance to get his psych meds because he is very very crazy, but he has been doing well for a decade as long as he gets his pills. The unstable rollout of DOGE created a temporary situation where it seemed like his meds would no longer be paid for, and the stress of it drove him into a delusional episode. That episode cost him his job, which cost him his housing, which has nearly destroyed his life in a matter of months. Now you have one more unmedicated crazy man on the streets until someone like me can find a way to get him help again. All that due to piss poor communication and giving huge power to a billionaire who has never worked in government before so he can take a chainsaw to any program he wants—a decision that even the administration seems to realize now was a terrible idea.
I live on the border. I used to be able to cross from Mexico to the US in under 15 minutes on the average day. Customs was well staffed, and the process was orderly. Very soon after Trump was elected, they started spreading out the border patrol staff to have a bunch of them stand directly at the border line and check for passports and/or immigration documents—exactly the same documents they will check for 2 minutes later at customs anyway. This has led to understaffing at the actual customs checkpoint, and now it takes around an hour a lot of the time.
One of my best friends is a trans woman, and now her identity isn’t even acknowledged by the President of the United States—a disrespect towards a citizen that should be unacceptable in a democracy.
I can keep going if you like…
So, you feel like less handouts, a secure border, and not embracing someone’s delusion of reality are bad things? I totally support all the things you say are negatives.
I’m not even going to address the first and third points because we simply disagree, but you missed what I was describing about the border.
It isn’t more secure, it is less efficient. They aren’t doing a more thorough check, they are checking exactly the same documents twice, and the first time they aren’t even scanning them to see if they are legitimate. They simply stop you and look at them which creates a bottleneck in the line and causes understaffing at the real checkpoint two minutes further down the walkway.
This understaffing has actually caused them to not have enough people in the checkpoint building to man the x-ray machines, so it is arguably less secure than it was before. If I cross at night now, I no longer even get my bag scanned, which used to be standard procedure during the previous administration.
Biden was known for his open border policies, extremely well documented. Everything I’ve read or seen on the news says illegal entry has slowed drastically under Trump. It’s OK that we disagree on the other stuff.
100% yes right now.
Username checks out.
Hahaha, I get that a lot. Enjoy your day.
I do most of the time… just not when captain fuckface is running the show
There are a lot of Captain Fuckfaces running around.
The country is and always has been based on fuckfaces owning and operating it, tRump is just a symptom, not the disease.
Our number one export is our brain rot. Soon :tm:
I live in America. It’s 2 AM and I just awoke from a nightmare wherein I was running from the govt. My wife, dog, and I were in hiding at my home, with friends occupying the place to help us stay hidden. But a drone spotted me. I shot it down, but we had 10 minutes to pack what I could into a short yellow schoolbus (which quickly became a British double-decker) and take off before agents showed up to capture or kill us.
By the way, I’m a white male, married to a white woman, and by all outside appearances, cis and “normal”. Probably one of the most protected classes in America right now. And even I’m having nightmares about where our country is headed and when it’ll be “my turn.”
I woke up, picked up my tablet, and this was the top post in my feed. 😣
Small, probably stupid tip, but what the hell. There is an almost surefire way to kill drones without needing a firearm. Buy a high-powered laser (>5W). It obviously won’t be enough to take the drone down, but just a fraction of a second of that beam is enough to permanently destroy the camera. The downside is that the beam is very visible so you’d also be giving away your location. Also works on static cameras like traffic cams, number plate readers, …
This would be a trash way to take down a drone. You would have to know where the camera is exactly on the drone and then manage to shine the laser directly into that camera long enough to damage it. As distance grows between you and the drone, that time to damage the lenses will grow longer.
The currently most common drone takedown methods implemented are radio signal jammers, counterattack drones with nets, and shotguns filled with an intermediate shot size between bird shot and buck shot. The first two are fairly expensive options which take know-how to create, where as the latter is a shotgun, which are abundant and fairly cheap in comparison to the other two.
Yeah and this way if you’re imperfect in aiming the FBI will show up at your door for lasering any aircraft in the background.
But the trick is you have to manage to point it directly into the camera lense. May the odds be ever in your favor.
High-powered lasers have a very wide beam ;)
If the beam is wide enough to make hitting the camera easy, it probably doesn’t have a high enough power density to cause serious damage. And even if it does, from what I’ve seen the damage is usually limited to dead pixels on the parts of the sensor directly exposed to the laser. I think a shotgun would be much more effective since all you have to do is clip a propeller or an important part of the internals and the drone is going down.
It definitely would be, but you can’t just order a shotgun online and have it delivered to you in a day like you can with a laser.
Why wait for shipping? Just take a trip to the Walmart and pick one up today. (The shotgun)
Most Americans don’t live in America.
“in the US…”
They mean live vs just existing.
Eh, at least the USA has agency - we get to choose which stupid direction to take half the world in, while most other countries are just along for the ride. Nowhere else except maybe China is like that, and I prefer even Trump to Xi.
Oh, you must be one of those techno-pharaohs out there.
Obviously the average American isn’t directly participating in making the major decisions, but what the average American wants still generally has far more influence on the future of the entire world than what the average citizen of any other country wants.
I think you are being naive. Sure, Americans may have more influence than most people in the world, but their electoral and political systems invalidate that privilege. Most people in the world expect nothing from Americans, we know better. Potentially, Americans could be far more influential in the world in a good sense, but they maintain a government that is toxic for the planet and seemingly, they just can’t get rid of it.
Um… I’m Australian and we just kicked out all the pro-Trump candidates. We also get to pick from a really long list of parties and even get to pick exactly who in the party we want. Voting is compulsory and because of that, voting has to be made accessible: it’s on a Saturday, you can vote early and polling stations are set up literally everywhere, even in the most remote locations.
America has more agency than a dictatorship. That’s a very low bar.
Edit: also Trump vs Xi.
One has no goal for the country except to line his own pockets and the other has very strong goals for the country (involving actually making their country an economic powerhouse).
One sees himself as a strict father of his country and the other sees himself as king.
If it was a decision between Trump and Xi, I’d pick Xi any day of the week. It’s a shit choice but I’d rather a leader than a puppet.
The delusion, awesome.
What about this did you choose in particular?
Well, I have the option of leaving. It’s not purely hypothetical for me because I’m not originally from the USA - I was just a kid when I came here, so it wasn’t my choice but it was a choice and I can see myself making a similar choice to go somewhere else. Maybe I will need to leave if things in the USA get a lot worse but for now living in a blue state still seems like the best available option.
I’ve found the USA to have some of the nicest, most welcoming people I’ve ever met. Probably some of these people have been lead down dark voting paths, against their own, and the world’s, best interests. All we can really hope for is enough people speak sense persuasively enough for them to hear it. And that means being understanding, empathetic and tolerant.
This comment is a breath of fresh air in this doomer echo chamber. Somewhere along the line people stopped wanting to fix things and now the people we need to save this country are leaving in droves. We need to remain positive and organized.
Every month I am reminded that this isn’t my country. It’s my landlords country, and I just temporarily rent a basement here.
Why doesn’t my landlord fix his country?
We’re trying to convince them, and so far none of them are listening.
Families all over the US and Canada are being torn apart. I’ve never seen anything like this in my lifetime, and I’m not a young man…
I fear greatly not just for my own country, but for the damage that will be done to the entire world if we can’t stop this.
TBH, I think there’s something wrong with Americans.
Rammstein disagrees
My social media feeds too.
Now playing Rammstein - Amerika
Thats what i thought before 2 pro-Trump fascists almost won the election in my country
The xenophobic “haha americans are so stupid/evil” attitude I’ve been seeing as of years ago all over Reddit and now even more intensly on Lemmy is making me very worried that people aren’t gonna recognize the same disinformation that led to all this when its served to them…
I don’t believe Americans and Europeans are as different as a lot of people seem to think. Or maybe I got dumber and more naive since my teenage years.
Luckily in my country, the vaguely trump style politician not only lost the election, but didn’t get enough votes in his own district and is no longer a politician. Same thing happened in Canada.
but now Alberta allegedly wants to secede…
They have wanted to secede officially for over 50 years. Alberta was right on board with the Western Canada Concept party in the early 80’s.
You shouldn’t be sleeping soundly. Most of you are only a few steps behind us on the same path.
Lol. Lmao even.
Your country has been a joke for at least the past decade, only thing america is doing these days is ensuring others independence from it (honestly the sole source of the countries value so we’ll see how that goes long term).
But have fun with your facists!
Youre right it should be everyone else’s problem but poor, suffering america
There is a rope tied between our currency and the rest of the western world’s ankle. Laughing at our drowning nation is ignoring that you’re running out of rope.
Except Trump has finally made every other country in the world question why we don’t just cut the rope. I think the rope will be cut if Trump continues to stay in office.
Definitely, but it takes a while to chop through a thick rope like that. If we sink too fast, a lot of other countries are screwed.
I love how Americans can always see themselves as a victim.
Yes you have handcuffs around every wrist you’ve had access to in the past century, but in this day and age even your handcuffs are outsourced.
Honestly America doesnt actually produce anything but IP laws these days.
And ya know other countries might not share your lack of education and realise its 1000% cheaper to simply just bypass the bully in the room.
I never said the word victim, but since you brought it up, 50% of the US are victims to this. A large number of us were actively fighting against this outcome and lost. We have been deciding what to do next, and many educated people are in the process of leaving the country. Those without that ability are stuck to suffer under the current conditions.
Yeah since everything is tied to the fucking dollar and whatever America does affects us all it’s not really surprising.
We’ll see if that shifts, perhaps the usd stability is coming to an end.
A lot of deep pockets people are shifting to the Euro already.
This is a very ignorant view.
Not much that I can do about it, so might as well not worry about it. Also my country is a few steps ahead of America
The are encouraging you and all other non-Americans to not fall asleep at the wheel like we have. The system that allowed this shit show to develop has been building for decades and we allowed it to happen.
Do not allow it to happen where you live, because the oligarchy is coming for you too.
I tell all my friends and family to use less USAian services and products. [email protected]
It’s a necessary step. Using more opensource stuff and consuming less USAian media will help at least a bit with the propaganda coming from there.
I didn’t choose to be born here and wish I was born somewhere where I wasn’t constantly fearing for what tomorrow could bring. But since I was born here I have to figure out a way to navigate this shit show of a country till I can flee
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The only difference between the US and Canada is how far along the path you are. There’s a reason your government gives standing ovations to literal Nazis
Me when I cook eggs
