Doomposting containment thread

Rather than shitting up threads where people are having reasonable conversations, put your doomposts here & spare everyone else your misery.

My paranoid thoughts these days run along the lines of “Why would the ultra-rich let the middle class collapse, isn’t it more profitable in the long run for there to be a strong stable working and middle class so that everyone can keep spending and spending (and also not shooting CEOs in the street)?” and the little voice goes “They have more info than we do — they know there isn’t much time left — they know shit is going to fall apart so hard and so fast the rest of us won’t know what hit us so their strategy is just crushing as much wealth out of society as possible so they can live sci-fi lives in a bubble while the rest of us scavenge rat carcasses.”

if there's one thing the last decade has taught me its that the ultra-rich don't know shit

thats not a doompost

honestly the respect for thread rules is through the floor these days

It can be, if you combine the belief that the ultra-rich don't know shit with the belief that nonetheless any attempts to take the steering wheel away from them will fail.

We’re all doomed, doomed I tell ya

When do we get our super shotguns?

(bookmarks thread for predictable future need. sighs)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BrNlyDxowWo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lPYmD7CyHlY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tiMZCgpXuO4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BuN83hqsn8U

Scott you have got to get off of youtube lol <3 How are you doing? Are you good?

That said I'm stocking up on things that might get...less available soon. Just in case.

The end is nigh!

Wasn’t thinking about this in terms of prepping, but since you mention, IO, what kinds of things are you stocking up on / anticipating shortages of?

Women's health-type stuff broadly speaking, Narcan, personal Rx that include some controlled stuff...those are top level. Under that is general first aid and personal care supplies.

The former are because I fear availability will drop, the latter because I expect prices will rise and/or they might be needed unexpectedly.

If you thought "Ehh it's a long shot, I don't need those things, that's for other people" may I suggest that the worst that could happen is someday you get to save someone's life? You can be a person who has a life-saving resource in an emergency! Especially if they get harder to...get.

"Are you good?"

haha, i'm okay! i watched ONE doomy economist video and all of a sudden my Youtube was filled with scare headlines like the ones above.

i'm so scared lol

Definitely see if we can get a lifetime supply of SSRI’s now lest RFK Jr. make us detox doing manual labor on an organic farm

https://www.the-independent.com/news/world/americas/us-politics/rfk-jr-kennedy-addicts-wellness-farms-b2585835.html

haha, i'm okay! i watched ONE doomy economist video and all of a sudden my Youtube was filled with scare headlines like the ones above.

― scott seward

yeah i gotta be careful about what i click on or the algo starts feeding me crap

the stuff i'm most careful about trying to avoid is beato-adjacent content

so far things are looking ok

mostly what i wind up getting recommended are extremely long jammidodger reaction videos

i've started watching more baseball videos to switch things up, which means i get recommended Baseball Doesn't Exist videos - "The Most Illegal Baseball Bat Ever Created" is the new one

i also got poetic wax doing a 20 minute video on the Eno/Television recordings, don't care

a 40 minute breakdown of HIM, the "lost gay jesus" film. i'm more interested in the _other_ gay jesus film, the unmade Jens Jorgen Thorsen film _The Many Faces of Jesus_. technically he's bi in this one. apparently the script was published but only translated into danish (the original script was in english). there's also a 1975 danish porn film called Jeg så Jesus dø ("I Saw Jesus Die"), but it's apparently heterosexual. i guess i should check that one out.

i just ran across a low-quality copy of an episode of the 1970 low-budget Star Trek knockoff Phoenix Five - i was trying to find a complete youtube upload of the pilot of the Fifth Glacial Era. god, i know so little aobut australian '70s television. it's in colour too! they must've had high hopes for that, considering colour tv didn't hit australia until, like, 1975

did prussian hitler just say he was going to "crush the ducks that oppose us"? sinister ducks indeed

now the algorithm is recommending me a kat blaque video entitled "the best BDSM film is korean". no it's doing good for me today.

i keep watching random analog synthesizer videos, microgranny noise jams with 200 views. means i get recommended a lot of videos on the history of the 303. the LOC just posted a 90 minutes video on Morton Subotnick and the Buchla 100, 500 videos, ok, i'm in on that. here's a 90 minute video called "FEMME: Lesbian History, Identity Politics & Invisibility", ok, i'll give that a shot.

"the great calculator wars of the 1970s"? ok that sounds good. cornelius 30th anniversary special? ooooh. ouch. "which is the best home video release of rudolph the red-nosed reindeer?" interesting but i don't actually care. "black people rate black anime characters' hair". i guess this is what happens when i watch FD Signifier videos and anime videos.

i know the preceding isn't actually doomposting. even though this is a dystopia i will say the dystopian megacorporation does seem to have a good idea about my niche interests.

um. my ass won't stop bleeding and i can't figure out why. it's not cancer.

The calculator wars sounds interesting! I got my dad a book about the history of the calculator and what Texas Instruments brought to the industry, slide rules to graphing machines, the whole nine yards...for Christmas last year. lol

My first time programming anything was with a HP-34C calculator. I still have to have RPN calculators ever since and can easily spend hours on that HP Calculator Museum site

lest we forget

every news headline i accidentally see throws me into quiet panic and rage and that's fine

I was very proud of myself yesterday, while I was making lunch I told my partner:

—I promise I'm not gonna spend the next four years telling you every stupid, infuriating thing that the people in power said or did.

Which lead to this exchange when we sat down to eat:

—What was the thing you wanted to tell me earlier?
—What thing?
—You said "I promise I'm not gonna spend the next four years telling you every infuriating thing, but..."
—Oh. I didn't though! I left out the "but"! There was absolutely gonna be a "but," but when I heard myself speaking, saying "I promise I'm not gonna spend the next four years..." I was like, Why wait? Why not start today. Aren't you proud of me?
—...Yeah!

(For the record though, the "but" was some jackass GOP congressman braying about deporting Bishop Budde)

The tariff stuff and other bans made me contemplate a career change into smuggling and trying to decide whether I would be good at it. I wouldn’t do it if I thought I wouldn’t be good at it.

The other day I had a minor panic at the thought of our city and state having to decide between deporting immigrants vs being banned from federal funds for affordable housing and education.

The tariff stuff and other bans made me contemplate a career change into smuggling

I mean

https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/gonewiththewind/images/1/1c/Rhett1.jpg/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/295?cb=20081103033236

https://medias.spotern.com/spots/w1280/356/356134-1646043443.webp

The dog is sitting at the table and drinking a nice relaxing beverage. The room is in flames. The dog knows it is not fine. The dog is engaging in self-care. The dog radically accepts that the room is on fire and they are not able to put out the flames. The dog cannot get out of the room. The exists are blocked. The dog prefers not to think about the reason the exits are blocked.

Nobody is coming for the dog. The people outside know the dog is there, but it is not safe for them to try and rescue the dog. The people outside love the dog very much and really, really want to help the dog. They can't. The dog accepts this. The people outside may not have radically accepted this yet.

The dog considers that she might perhaps be suffering from smoke inhalation. The dog wonders if she should stop, drop, and roll, like she was taught in obedience school. If the dog did this, though, she wouldn't be able to drink her tea. It is a very nice cup of tea. One wouldn't think drinking hot tea in a room that is on fire would provide much solace, but it does. The dog is very glad and grateful for the cup of tea.

is this for US politics specifically or was it envisaged as like wide use

Do you mean like...Spurs?

wide use

spurs haven't got any width

I think it was last year. I think it was after the election. The human memory isn't as reliable as we like to think it is, and the longer ago something was, the less reliable my memory is. So I want to write it now, at least, as fully as I can remember it.

I don't follow the media, as a harm reduction measure. It wasn't until after the election that I heard about what he said he was going to _do_. One of my friends said that she was worried for her father-in-law, that
That Man said he was going to deport all immigrants, legal and illegal, and her father-in-law was a naturalized citizen. (Her father-in-law voted for Trump, incidentally.)

And I... have learned to think before I speak. And at the same time, it was like... of course That Man said it. That Man was a fucking lunatic. He had no idea about anything. I mean, you can't just deport people who are _legal_ citizens to countries they are _no longer_ legal citizens of, the logistical hurdles alone are...

"Leave the Bronx."

Oh. Oh, _fuck_.

It is like that, sometimes, The stupidest possible things. There's this terrible mockbuster of "Escape From New York" called _Escape From the Bronx_. Made in Italy, naturally. When Henry Silva sends people around with loudspeakers assuring people that they'll give everyone a nice place to live in Arizona, it's obvious that he's actually going to kill them. He's evil. That's what evil people do. I mean, not just in movies, the movie didn't just make that up. There's precedent. A well-known precedent. A man who said in public that he was going to "deport" a certain group of people, and what he meant, very obviously meant, was that he was going to kill them all. And he did, in fact, kill a large number of people. Millions.

And I know this, have known it for quite a long time. And Trump is so obviously like this other man that it doesn't even bear saying, at this point. And somehow my brain didn't make that connection until I thought of _Escape From the Bronx_. My brain couldn't get there by direct flight. It needed to make a transfer.

And then I was suicidal for, I don't know, maybe a week or so.

I've learned to think before I speak. I've learned to watch what I say and to who. If I'm not careful about what I say and how I say it, I could put people I care about at risk, the way I was at risk for a little bit. The flipside of that is that I'm carrying a lot in my head. A lot I can't really say. And sometimes I don't know if something's really true until I say it.

Yesterday I said it out loud to someone else for the first time. It was my therapist. I said that if things didn't change, a lot of people were going to end up dead. And it's normal... it's normal for patients to say things like that, and one gently pushes back, in a way that doesn't make the patient feel challenged or invalidated but encourages them to "check the facts". She said, lots of things could happen. You don't know that for certain.

And I'd been thinking about this in a while, trying to de-escalate that thought, "check the facts" on that thought for a while, and I said it. A lot of times I do check the facts on something and it doesn't hold up. Usually only takes a day or so for me to realize. And like I said, it'd been months. So I told her. I told her about how he said he was going to "deport" all those people, and she said what I thought when I first heard about it - oh, that's ridiculous, I don't know how he thinks he's going to manage something like that, and I said (therapist's name). He doesn't intend to. When fascists say they're going to "deport" people, they mean something else.

And she believed me. I'm cautious about... I don't want to be a Cassandra to the extent that I can help it. I'm never quite sure if people will believe me or not, when I say some things, even if they are true. She believed me, though.

Last night I was at movie night with some friends, and my friend who has a car gave me a ride home. And she said, how are things going. It's difficult for people to talk about things like that these days, not just me. I don't want to be negative, I don't want being around me to be an unpleasant or traumatic experience. And I talked for a little while about watching movies with friends. I've started doing a lot more of that, because a lot of times I just don't know how to talk, things being the way they are. And I said look, I don't want to be... I don't want to be negative, but I think it's important to say this. When a fascist says he's going to deport a certain group of people, a large number of people, he doesn't mean deport. And she's culturally Jewish. (Pretty sure anti-Zionist. It's not a conversation I initiate, but in my social circle it's a safe assumption.) She knows immediately what I'm saying. And she says yeah, I think it was important to say that.

So I'm gonna say it here. It's easier to say it to cis people, simply because, well, you're overall a lower suicide risk. I get the impression... I'm not hugely socially connected, my world is pretty small... but I get the impression that most people haven't made that connection. To me it's not... I don't look at it judgmentally. My experience is that there are personal consequences, it can be pretty traumatic for me to _think_ certain things, _especially_ if they're true. And so I don't want to say those things. It's important to say, though. If That Man is not stopped... that is something he _will_ do to the people he's saying he's going to "deport". That those are, literally, the stakes here. I think it's important for people to know that and be able to accept that.

But I'm not going to say it outside of the doomposting thread. Yet.

You're not the only one, Kate. I've seen more than a handful of people saying out loud that these ICE raids and threats of deportation aren't about deportation, they're about the other thing. Things. Most people are at the very least connecting the dots to labor camps and effective slavery. The proposed Missouri law makes this very clear: life in prison without the possibility of parole for being undocumented, and humans being hunted by bounty patrols.

hi all ... just dropped in to see what's happening in this thread. i'm going to go now. thanks!

Alpine Static’s condition was in no condition to be in this thread.

I hear you, Kate & IO. I have a lot of the same thoughts and I have them a lot. I think about that famous passage from “They Thought They Were Free” about how people accustom themselves to the intolerable incrementally. I think about the boy who cried wolf — there’s a version of the story where he wasn’t making it up, someone was putting wolf-shaped decoys up all over the place and whisking them away before the villagers could get there, and — “see, it’s always wolves with you shepherd boys, everything’s a wolf.” And when they send in the real wolves nobody will come.

I think about how many people — myself included — would be willing to give up their livelihood to confront the horrors, in the face of almost certain failure & consignment to the horror-house. Not many of us. Myself included, probably, depending.

They’ve been preparing for this for years. We’ve been crossing our fingers that our roommates wouldn’t invite the vampire across the threshold. Now we’re in the room with the vampire. Our roommate has gone to get the vampire a beer. The vampire doesn’t care about me. Yet. But he’s looking at the closed door of our other roommate. She works nights. We both know she’s not sleeping in there — she knows the vampire is in the living room. She and the vampire are acutely aware of each other. They can hear each other thinking.

Added “what if there is a bank run?” to my doom list that needs containing

Added “what if there is a bank run?” to my doom list that needs containing

I'm sure the FDIC is on some right-wing maniac's kill list.

Added “what if there is a bank run?” to my doom list that needs containing

― Elvis Telecom

Yeah I don't spend much time thinking about it because, well, it seems trivial in light of the other things happening, but one of the... less awful possibilities in this whole thing is that That Man actually winds up implementing some fucking Larouchite economic policy in order to, I don't know, pay off the national debt or something, thereby rendering global currency basically worthless. Or maybe he'll decide the official currency of the United States is Trump Memecoin. Or something. IDK. Everything seems so up in the air that doing any long-term planning - like, say, looking for a job - seems pretty fucking pointless.

I've started relying a lot more on less "healthy" coping mechanisms. Alcohol. Sleeping pills. Not to an extent that it's likely to cause problems. I've just historically been kind of an ascetic about substances. "Drink more" doesn't _seem_ like the kind of thing that would be a good life decision, but neither did "come out as transgender", which was such a good decision that it's _still_ a good decision even if it winds up getting me killed.

Serious-Not-Serious thought: I was at coffee the other day and this older couple had flyers printed up saying "TAX THE VAMPIRES". I get the metaphor, but I am a nerd, and I tend to think about literal vampires. Also, I am gay, and while I am not a monsterfucker, I do think vampires are hot in a gay way.

I definitely understand the desire to dehumanize fascists, and at the same time... I'm not a monster. It's taken me a long time to accept that. The problem with all fictional points of comparison for fascists is that most of them are more sympathetic than That Man. I while away my time talking with friends about whether this fictional villain or that fictional villain is as bad as That Man. A lot of them just aren't.

IDK. A lot of people do like the villains, the bad guys. In my generation it seems like it's always been that way. There are people who like the Joker because he's evil, and there are people who like the Joker because he's gay, and as the meme goes, we are not the same... but we do have the same cultural reference points, the same _heroes_ in a lot of cases. We just understand them differently. The Matrix? Fantastic film. I think that. Some dumb kid who shot up his high school thought that.

I guess that's not "doomy" as such. Just interesting.

the thing with that is all the villains that my generation empathized with or found 'relatable' - Tyler Durden, Walter White, Tony Soprano, Jordan Belfort, Joker...they all at least had some personality. they said cool things and had moments that were badass. because they are fictional characters. the real life versions of them have none of this, they are in fact the most cringey, uninteresting, miserable people on the planet, at least Trump circa the 2015 debates kinda looked like he was having some fun, now they're just throwing their entire being behind some dude who has literally everything a human being could ever ask for but instead spends 12 hours a day responding "so true!" to race science on Twitter. they're all just unbelievable losers

Hence the meme

https://64.media.tumblr.com/8ce692e029d948264cea6f9a8be08bf8/4b6f27f088f1cc81-ad/s540x810/4d6299ada59d80087e653cde8133bf0152a47464.jpg

I'm sure the FDIC is on some right-wing maniac's kill list.

Hence the meme

― the real slim pickens (Ye Mad Puffin)

every generation gets the hannah arendt it deserves, ig

xp I can't believe this took until 2025, but it finally occurred to me the other day: When Donald Trump looks in the mirror, he sees Robert Downey Jr. as Tony Stark, right?

I don't think he knows what that is.

Apply same scenario to Elon tho and I'd agree.

Trump's mirror fantasy is probably closer to 1981 Arnold

i almost posted the melanoma in the “i dont care do u” coat earlier in response to xyz

― madame defarge supporters club (Hunt3r), Thursday, 8 January 2026 bookmarkflaglink

Clearly ppl were pissed off at me, yes. Some, for a long time *kieth voice* I get it.

So i want to get a sense of what is happening here.

By sending MORE troops into minneapolis, trump is seemingly trying to provoke more violence. Perhaps even engineer a conflict between ICE and local law enforcement. I say seemingly because I cannot read his mind, but it seems obvious to me that having more ICE on the streets will make things worse.

Is this what it looks like, ie, an attempt to engineer a pretext to invoke the insurrection act? And from here, is he going to try to cancel the midterms?

OR, are they just flailing around?

I cannot read his mind

lol "mind"

he’s been wanting to invoke the insurrection act since his first term. so yes he wants his pretext.

weird but I think about how climate changes affecting events on the ground. If Minneapolis were colder like it used to be these ice people wouldn’t want to go anywhere near it so they’d probably be hassling different cities so it’s just a wash I guess.

Trump cannot cancel midterms.

I know we're saying this the week that he kidnapped a sovereign leader, but the move, however criminal, falls within executive powers that have been stretched and redefined for more than a century. He can't unilaterally say, "Well, no elections this November."

i'm not sure why canceling elections strikes anybody as less likely than having things continue "as they normally do"

there's a lot of things he "can't" do or "wouldn't" do and institutions, industry, and the media have all quietly acquiesced

an attempt to engineer a pretext to invoke the insurrection act?

It's clear that Trump is very susceptible to the suggestion that he could seize total power for himself by invoking the insurrection act, so that thought must be entertained. He's mentioned it before. It would instantly create a desperate situation because it is the equivalent of pushing all his chips into a winner-take-all pot playing the cards he's holding today. There would be guaranteed chaos, bloodshed, and madness. It would quickly come down to just how many hardcore fascists respond to the call, because the insurrection act has no power in and of itself without the will to violently enforce it until the opposition has been crushed.

i'm not sure why canceling elections strikes anybody as less likely than having things continue "as they normally do"

― budo jeru, Friday, January 9, 2026 1:47 PM (two minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

there's a lot of things he "can't" do or "wouldn't" do and institutions, industry, and the media have all quietly acquiesced

― budo jeru, Friday, January 9, 2026 1:49 PM

One horrible doomsday scenario at a time!

I assume canceling midterm elections would be a state-level thing?. But if some number of states were to cancel, Trump and his enablers wouldn't let the ensuing chaos go to waste.

Plus there have been all sorts of voter suppression efforts in many recent elections. Have any of these been blocked for 2026 and beyond?

I think canceling the midterms wasn’t the best way to put it. I am thinking using ICE and other federal troops for voter suppression.

i do think miller and co want an ice officer killed, and eventually they likely will get it i fear. governed by psychopaths

for sure

Too bad the ice agents are too stupid to understand they are being used

some of them want to be abused

they want one killed too and truly don’t think it will be them xp

i'm not sure why canceling elections strikes anybody as less likely than having things continue "as they normally do"

Going to war under false pretenses, brutalizing and murdering people, coups, extrajudicial elimination of heads of state, stealing elections, etc. have not been new. Trump has dramatically increased the tempo at which these things happen but they’re all basically normal parts of our state apparatus.

What is the mechanism for canceling California elections?

1. For the "you should have complied with law enforcement instructions crowd" - civil disobedience is the nation's literal origin story.

Not that it would do any good or change any minds, I do find myself wanting to remind persons of the (ahem) patriotic persuasion that plenty of dudes in 1770s Boston, Lexington, and Concord should also have obeyed instructions to disperse by that logic.

2. It's also an interesting counter to "why aren't Americans out in the street?" Because here is someone who quite literally WAS out in the street.

There's no ICE in my streets to go out and confront today. I'd have to go out searching for them and I'm not ready to do that, yet. As an alternative option for staying grounded in the middle of this out-of-control administration's accelerating provocations I'm going to contact the only Oregon Republican in Congress and remind him of his oath of office.

Going to war under false pretenses, brutalizing and murdering people, coups, extrajudicial elimination of heads of state, stealing elections, etc. have not been new. Trump has dramatically increased the tempo at which these things happen but they’re all basically normal parts of our state apparatus.

what is your point? that institutional decay and rampant fraud weaken the system and make an authoritarian takeover more likely? because i agree

One horrible doomsday scenario at a time!

― The Luda of Suburbia (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn)

i move to allow two doomsday scenarios at a time

So ordered!

adam curtis font

exponential doomposting growth

There's no ICE in my streets to go out and confront today.

Do I misrecall that you’re in Portland?

My streets are in a white, well off suburb. I'm sure they are active somewhere within 10 miles of me, but as I also said I'm not up to going out searching for them today. Did you have a point?

what is your point?

Nothing happening is remotely unprecedented. Dissolving federalism as a concept would be. What’s the mechanism by which mid-terms in 50 individual states are cancelled? Do you think the military is behind this move?

i didn't make any claims about precedent, i also didn't claim that the midterms were going to be canceled, what i said was that if they try to do it, it wouldn't surprise me, and the media and industry would run interference for them, and probably assholes like you would sit around saying "what's everybody so worried about, this has all happened before when you think about it"

i think probably we can deal with the erosion of democracy as it comes, day by day, without getting our panties in a bundle about whether this specific development is 100% historically a novelty, and also without assuming that caring about it means we want to go back to some fictional "normal" time when democracy worked so well and politicians upheld norms etc etc. trumpism as a movement is new enough, and scary enough, even if it draws from the playbook of previous conservative activists and pols

one would imagine so, and yet.

https://i.ibb.co/KcZyC39d/twin-peaks-its-happening-again.gif

Do I misrecall that you’re in Portland?

― uploading this content requires perseveration (sic), Friday, January 9, 2026 12:50 PM (one hour ago)

damn, aimless, you're around PDX? i had no idea! we should hang out!

yes i know "hey come hang out with me" probably doesn't count as doomposting

i do feel kinda bad about being as disconnected as i am. like, showing up is important, and quite honestly, i don't know where or when to show up. i do think there is definitely this surveillance state culture. i was walking over to visit my friend, who's recovering from surgery, and somebody had a yard sign that said "clean up after your dog" and it had icons of a dog and a lawn and a _security camera_. it's these little things that strike me. like, wow, we literally live in a dogshit surveillance state. and i think it is a result of what someone upthread i think called "lawlessness". it's not that i hate cops, it's that i hate _being_ a cop. sure, we're all watching the watchmen, but to me, what's more important than watching is _watching out for_.

if aimless feels like calling an oregon republican is useful, that it's going to accomplish things, i'm not gonna wag my finger at him for not getting out in the streets, because i mean, i have lots of friends who aren't showing up, for various reasons. do i personally think calling oregon republicans is useful? no, not really, but i don't think it's gonna do any harm.

anyway if i find out about someplace to show up to, i might show up. resistance is a _practical_ thing. it's not that i'm scared of violence. it's that being around crowds makes me confused and overwhelmed, and i've been to enough events to know that there will be a LOT of people showing up.

it's weird because i am an anti-doomposter these days, in some sense. it's certainly not that i think "it'll all blow over". it won't. some things will get worse. things will get better eventually, but i don't know when or how or if i'll still be alive when they do. this is a belief i have, sure, but it's not blind faith.

the thing i will keep reminding people is that fascism is fundamentally built on _lies_. one of the biggest lies is that nobody is doing anything to stop this, and/or that if we are doing anything, it's not working. people are not ok with what ICE is doing. the ability of the government to do the things it wants to do is being _severely hampered_ by ordinary people's refusal to comply with what the government is trying to do.

this morning one of my friends was telling me that she's started reading about the rise of Nazi Germany. and i said well, if that helps, go for it, AND the thing you should realize is that this _isn't_ Germany in 1933. it's not a matter of better or worse, it's different. history doesn't repeat, it iterates.

someone on a discord server i'm on asked me just a bit ago, "i'm in idaho, and i'm scared. is it safe for me to move to portland?" because of what they've heard on the news. and i think back to what the president has been saying about portland, and what happens is that a bunch of us, independently, say pretty much the same thing: don't worry about getting shot. worry about affording an apartment. housing is expensive out here and there aren't a lot of job opportunities.

i don't know what happens next, but i know the only way forward is for me to keep living my values. since my values are evidence-based, and the administration's values patently are not, and since i see many, many, MANY people doing living evidence-based values as well, i got a hard time believing in "doom".

but to me, what's more important than watching is _watching out for_.

whoops didn't explain this adequately, by that i mean caring for people in community in the absence of the resources that would be provided by a functioning society

i think probably we can deal with the erosion of democracy as it comes, day by day,

Indeed, that’s why jumping to fantasies of cancelled midterms are so useless.

whether this specific development is 100% historically a novelty

This is aggressively missing the point re: novelty. Trump gets to use ICE as the American SS and indiscriminately bomb fisherman because those are within the bounds of our system. Revving up the meatgrinder of humanity that is the American political and economic system is something he can get away with because it’s all been allowed before to some extent.

Lack of novelty isn’t a gotcha, it’s a question of how we reached the point where something gets to happen. Which is why I ask how the process is reached where elections held across and governed by the laws of 50 states are cancelled.

America is amenable enough to grinding authoritarianism without jumping to fresh new takes on Red (State) Dawn.

My streets are in a white, well off suburb. I'm sure they are active somewhere within 10 miles of me, but as I also said I'm not up to going out searching for them today. Did you have a point?

I didn’t, but I also didn’t realise you were saying “I live in a white, well-off suburb, and ICE are not a concern here.” Was just surprised at the potential inference that they had completely withdrawn from the city by dawn the day after CBP shot two people, and hours after the local cops arrested folks peacefully protesting at an ICE facility in response.

I also didn’t realise you were saying “I live in a white, well-off suburb,

Yes. I said that.

and ICE are not a concern here.”

In spite of your quotes, no I did not say that. As for your inferences, they are yours.

idk, it's interesting. i heard from a friend who showed up to what they called a, let me see... a Fun Block Party yesterday. everybody euphemizes. the shit they used to make fun of the victorians for doing, euphemizing ankles or whatever... i mean, it's questionable historiography. the euphemizing now is real, though. we're euphemizing completely peaceful, non-violent protests. anyway she said there were "lots of lovely retired people" there. and that tracks with my experience from showing up at previous Fun Block Parties. it's in fashion to hate on boomers, and to some extent that's fair. on the other hand, generations are fake. it's not like every boomer betrayed sixties ideals. most of them never _had_ "sixties ideals". the ones who had those ideals and are still alive... they're really passionate. it's not just fascist boomers who are loud. lots of older folks feel like they're not being heard and they are being pretty loud about it anywhere they can (meaning, mostly, NOT the Internet). the "no kings" thing has really taken off, memetically. i do remember it starting as... well, it's the old anarchist slogan, "no gods, no kings", and "no gods" didn't do well with focus groups but "no kings", jesus, older folks LOVE that shit. it plays into the patriotic myth they were taught, i was taught - a revolution against the oppressive tyrant, george iii! which is apparently about as accurate as blaming queen elizabeth ii for the suez crisis would be.

kind of interesting honestly. we talk about living in a "post-truth" era but what i was taught in school wasn't necessarily the _truth_. well of course i'm not going to quibble with anybody who shows up, because what's more important than truth is _values_. i was on the weekly zoom call with my boomer family yesterday - i wanted to assure them that pdx _still_ isn't on fire. they already knew. i don't necessarily think of them as being more representative of boomers than i am of gen x - they're weirdo intellectuals - but _somebody_ is showing up in droves to these protests, and they look a lot more like my family than the people i see on the internet. my hippie uncle said he'd called his representatives in congress, and encouraged everyone on the call to do likewise. well of course i'm not doing that, because one, i have developed a terror of phone calls. a lot of boomers don't necessarily understand that... i'm not sure they understand how awful making phone calls to businesses is. i think the other difference is that, well, i'm not sure america is _worth saving_, at this point. the people at the protests, the people making phone calls to their congresspeople, the impression i get is that most of them disagree.

i was hanging out in my apartment the week after christmas and a person of indeterminate gender (complimentary) knocked on my door. they wanted to tell me about a "cascadian independence" rally on may 1. i said to them "god, that's four months from now, a lot can happen in four months". and then i told my friends that i was impressed that a trans person (whatever their gender, they definitely weren't cis) could organize something more than a week out.

no kings rallies, though, don't really _need_ to be organized. they're spontaneous popular uprisings. just because the administration ignores them doesn't make them meaningless.

just because the administration ignores them doesn't make them meaningless.

ty. in the end the people count for more than the administration. it's obvious the administration is trying as hard as it can to implement fascism, but there's still a lot of road between us and and a totalitarian police state like the Stasi in eastern Germany. the way not to go down that road is for enough of us to refuse, even if they use violence against us. there's a sound reason why non-predators tend to gather in large herds or flocks. Groups of crows acting together can outface any hawk, eagle or owl.

attended a protest in my town which included signing up for direct action including rapid response teams, hanging out with day laborers, etc.

just, yeah. the doom feels extra real so far this year. everything is an escalation.

there's a sound reason why non-predators tend to gather in large herds or flocks. Groups of crows acting together can outface any hawk, eagle or owl.

I love this sentiment and this is a good succinct way to say it. I see it happening more in my community, right now with tech, maybe eventually (soon?) in a very physical way.

One way in that I think this moment is unique is the imperviousness of the regime to public opinion, half-hearted and performative attempts at addressing “affordability” aside. Is it because they are all terminally online?

They're terminally evil.

for one, I really don't think they *do* care. Losing control of Congress is something they don't want to happen, but it's an inevitable reality that they've dealt with before. Dems had control of Congress for a while with Biden and the country still felt like it was being run by MAGA thanks to the SCOTUS makeover and the red states pushing hateful legislation.

they feel that if Dems get the House back, they'll try to impeach Trump again and it will make Dems less popular and regain some of theirs, and tha Trump will still be able to achieve most of whatever he wants.

where they do care about public opinion is whether those numbers suggest more people will show up in the streets to oppose them to the point hwere they're finally overwhelmed and have to retreat pathetically on the regular, OR....that more MTGs will start defecting due to fear of losing their jobs and start obfuscating them. but the numbers aren't in a place where they're forced to do that.

likewise....their own base will find them weak if they care about it so they're kinda boxed in.

Trump still cares in that he still has sleepless nights Truth Socialing in regards to being insulted but the rest of his team no longer gives a shit.

the fact that they couldn't even muster anything to the tune of "we regret this incident" and went straight to "please pray for our hero officer who was brave enough to shoot this fuckin bitch 3 times in the face" before they even knew what her name was is probably the most nakedly evil shit I've ever seen from the US government

it's easy to forget, for instance, that in Trump's first term, he was frequently undermined by his own party early on in the term. Lindsey Graham hadn't gone Full Coward yet, and prior to the Kavanaugh hearing/accusations, was more likely to occasionally buck the dude until Kavanaugh became his 'line in the sand' and he went scorched earth against Ds. McCain even called Australia after Trump almost caused an international crisis and more or less apologized for him his first week on the job. and of course the internal meetings with Trump/Bannon and R Congresspeople about the new health care bill were hilariously contentious behind closed doors, and Republicans excoriated him over his comments about Charlottesville.

by the end of the term, he wasn't really facing much internal pressure at all, because the impeachment drove the Rs to party unity. that's why we started to see glimpses of what Trump is doing now in late 2019-early 2020, even if he still didn't have enough loyalists in place to completely go nuts back then.

xpost yeah and even that is a bit of a departure. Trump hasn't changed, he would have always defended ICE guy from the jump, but even late in his first term, his lackies would have drawn focus away from the victim by more or less saying "we're gathering facts about what happened - the public would be wise not to jump to conclusions" style wishy-washyness. having DHS more or less announce they've cleared the killer 5 minutes after the shooting happens and before the public even knows it happens is definitely a perfect illustration of the confident authoritarianism - they desire so badly to control the narrative.

I'll be honest, I knew ICE was losing popularity, but I was pleasantly surprised to see how poorly their PR campaign worked. I mean, one could argue it DID work because 27-35% of those polled saw a video in which a civilian was murdered and said "she tried to kill the officer". but....would the number really have been significantly lower pre-PR campaign? most of that is from Republicans who find protesting "Evil".

now, there have been actual previous incidents of ICE officer misconduct, rare as they are, where the person was held accountable or disciplined for their actions, but in this case, the obviousness of the one-sided nature of the evidence leaning towards the victim being murdered is why they went on a full court press because they KNEW this one looked bad for them and were scared of this being some kind of seismic turning point.

unfortunately for them...it is and nothing they can is going ot change that

One way in that I think this moment is unique is the imperviousness of the regime to public opinion, half-hearted and performative attempts at addressing “affordability” aside. Is it because they are all terminally online?

― Gentler Death Squads Please (Boring, Maryland), Friday, January 16, 2026 7:03 AM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

They're terminally evil.

― The Luda of Suburbia (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, January 16, 2026 7:07 AM (yesterday)

the distinction is increasingly fine.

now, there have been actual previous incidents of ICE officer misconduct, rare as they are, where the person was held accountable or disciplined for their actions, but in this case, the obviousness of the one-sided nature of the evidence leaning towards the victim being murdered is why they went on a full court press because they KNEW this one looked bad for them and were scared of this being some kind of seismic turning point.

unfortunately for them...it is and nothing they can is going ot change that

― Bertolt Blecch (Neanderthal), Friday, January 16, 2026 7:22 AM (yesterday)

it's not really a "playbook", it's literally the only thing they know how to do at this point

ruling by decree is a hard enough sell. ruling by nero decree is just not ever going to be a basis effective rule.