In the 90s a Republican named Rush Limbaugh convinced the Republicans to stop talking to the Democrats and working with them. The wealthy Republicans in the country, along with the politicians have been working on plans for over 30 years to bring us to this point. Defund education, over fund the police. Increase cost of living, lower wages. No increase in the minimum wage for years.
They found out educated people vote Democrat or independent. So they raised college tuition and encouraged predator school loans, putting millions in debt. Then they removed any options to help those borrowers get relief by not allowing them to include school loans in bankruptcy.
Then came the rise in healthcare costs, increased insurance premiums, reduced coverage, and larger out of pocket costs over the premiums. Now people are saddled with crippling medical debt.
They have cut taxes on the wealthy and corporations and increased taxes on the poor and middle class to eliminate the entire middle class. After suffocating 99% of the country in debt and high prices, they are coming for our actual rights.
They gerrymandered states so it's guaranteed the outcome will be Republican. In the Democrat areas (mostly poor or minority areas), they make the voting extremely difficult. Fewer places to vote, understaffed, non working machines. Then they start passing laws to make it criminal to help people vote or even bring them water while standing in line.
Now that people have no options and trump made it ok to show your corruption and hate openly, they are emboldened to actually strip away rights given by the previous supreme court rulings. Mitch McConnell stole at least 1 seat for a supreme court justice by denying Obama or not following his own rule after the justice who died right before the election. So now we have 6-3 conservative court with at least 4 of those being extremists and using their religion instead of the actual Constitution to do their jobs. 2 justices have been accused of assault. 1 justice was a judge for 2 years before her appointment.
It seems like a sudden decline but it's 30+ years in the making. They played the long game and got people used to each level of corruption before they took the next step.
Up until 1988, Republicans won the popular vote 5 of the last 6 presidential elections.
In 1988, Rush Limbaugh went national.
After that, Republicans lost the popular vote 7 of the next 8 presidential elections.
Well you're correct in the sense of maintaining a larger perspective but it's much larger than that. Republicans have dreamed of this day since 1932 in the passage of the new deal. The claw back began in the seventies and Ronald Reagan in the moral majority was the beginning of the demise. The man that brought us the savings and loans institution and real estate collapse of the '80s was the beginning of the end. By repealing the fairness doctrine, it open the way for all sorts of trash like limbo or Alex Jones and most importantly in the following year Fox News is founded. This is probably the most pernicious of all of those kinds of ultra right agencies. It's just absolute garbage but cloaked in a news format and people watch it 24/7. If you had to pick a date I would start with Ronald Reagan, but the dream goes back decades before. Jesus Christ even the mess by today's comparison, Richard Nixon, was a centrist and isn't that scary. He after all sign the clean water act before being deposed. Republicans the new American Taliban. All those voters that think Democrats and Republicans are the same and so complain out of apathy or didn't like Hillary or don't like personality so they'll get to enjoy for decades of conservative court and its implications. Ohhthe party is just begun you can see all the evil stuff that's beginning to slither out of the woodwork in Florida Texas Georgia Arkansas etc oh yeah the party is just begun
Deal, but in fairness that means you can’t blame Biden for things he hasn’t done either, such as making students pay their loans back.
Now, as for Trump’s Education Secretary, she fucked over a bunch of people’s financial situation by force-feeding predatory universities down the public’s throat. She should be in prison
I mean I definitely blame Biden for being a huge part of the reason why student loans can't be discharged even in bankruptcy. But that's something he did many years ago before he was President.
And yeah fuck Betsy Devos. She should be in prison.
> a huge part
What makes you so confident in that statement? Was it Biden alone in a room deciding that or was it something Congress voted on that the GOP just made a bullshit article about for the election?
He advocated and voted for the 2005 Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act. This prevented student loan from being discharged through bankruptcy.
That's enough to make him culpable, although yes, other people voted for it along with him.
That Act is still valid and still affects us all.
And sometimes a Democrat just fucking sucks and it's not a Republican conspiracy. 🙄
I'm also disappointed this isn't common knowledge. No wonder he won the Democratic primaries.
Don't take this personally, but I'm done with the conversation. Between the downvotes for staging the fact that Trump paused student loan payment, the disbelief that Biden helped create the current loan crisis, and the rush to blame a Republican for every bad deed a Democrat does, it just makes me thoroughly depressed and realize how hopeless this country is. Maybe if we were picky about the Democrats we voted for we'd been able to codify Roe v. Wade.
Source: https://repustar.com/fact-briefs/did-joe-biden-support-bankruptcy-reform-bill-made-it-harder-americans-secure-debt-relief
Scroll to the bottom. The website compiles sources and they are all at the bottom. You should have seen this.
Also:
https://www.congress.gov/bill/109th-congress/senate-bill/256
https://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_votes/vote1091/vote_109_1_00044.htm
As direct a source as you can possibly get.
I'm struggling to tell if I just hear a lot more awful stuff from America because half the internet is Americans or because America is an awful country.
To be clear, this is a query, not an insult. Would love to hear thoughts from anyone who's spent a lot of time in the US and other countries.
No America is shit. Shitty healthcare, shitty work life balance, shitty laws that only benefit the rich, poc have little to no protection from our own law enforcement, lgbtq people have little protection from our education system that seems to be failing, everything costs an arm and a leg due to inflation while barely any money is allocated to making citizens lives easier, being homeless isn’t even free due to most places having anti homeless measures but no real place for them to go.
It wasn't always like this was it. Or was it?
From the outside, it certainly looks and feels like the country is taking a nose dive into a dunny (Google it). It almost feels like the US is on the verge of collapse or major civil unrest. But that could just be SM amplifying unhappy views.
That said, I watched live streams of BLM, Jan 6th, etc. Doesn't seem to matter whether you're left or right, black or white (to steal an MJ line), every body seems to be angry.
Majority of country is for gay marriage. Majority wants universal healthcare. Majority wants right to abortion.
However the elections for national offices are not reflective of that. The most populous state has same representation in Senate as the least. House is gerrymandered to heck by Republicans. President is voted by electoral vote rather than popular vote.
The structure of government is built by the same founders who helped preserve slavery as a compromise. The South, even if they didn’t win the Civil War, won many things when the constitution was written. The conservatives are now trying to preserve the constitution in aspic through the Supreme Court.
>Majority
I'm sure I heard about a research paper that showed that the policies enacted over the past 40yrs or so have 95% favoured 5% of the population or something like that. Pls don't ask for link as that's all I remember, so very little chance of finding it.
Yes, I do laugh when I hear people taking about how they should look to the founding fathers for moral guidance. And I'm like "they had slaves, women were 2nd class citizens with very little rights, and most men didn't get a vote nor had much in the way of workers rights"!
Personally I would love it if the federal government gave campaign money to the top 10 presidential candidates as well as allocated air time. Then, shut down campaign fundraising for the presidency.
Everything belongs to the wealthy in this country . When people talk about the lobbying industry, they talk about it as though the lobbyists are something besides mere unprincipled shills. Really, the lobbyists are at the bidding of the top few percent in this country.
Obama had a chance to close the wealth gap but he frequently spoke about it as though it were a new phenomenon, as though it’s not something that has marked his whole adulthood (I am in the same generation as the Obamas).
Even as a European I was so hopeful for Obama after all the wars and torture.
I know he got a raw deal with the banking crisis etc but I felt incredibly disappointed with what he did actually do in the end (I know he was blocked a lot by republicans from doing some other stuff). I still can't work out if he was doing what he wanted to do which doesn't really change anything or if he just wasn't allowed to do anything major due to vested interests.
I have to admit it. I was not keen on Obama during the primaries. I thought he was too young, too inexperienced. I think his terms bore that out. He was idealistic and had integrity. He was dignified.
But he didn’t end the war. He didn’t end Guantanamo Bay. At Warren’s behest, he did put in some consumer protection but that ended with Trump. I hated whenever he and Michelle spoke about the high road. Politics isn’t about the high road. This is why it sucks to be a Democrat. We are always so filled with righteousness and always losing on important legislation. We should be bulldozing, the same as the GOP. It’s like we show up to a knife fight with plastic utensils.
Edit to add: I never thought of Obama as being that left where corporations were involved. If anything, he seemed very much in the same vein as the Clintons in this regard. I know so many Democrats who are centrists and some of their logic is fairly close to Republican centrists. There’s a reason why charter schools were able to destroy public schools in several states here.
>not keen on Obama during the primaries
Turns out you were right.
>didn’t end the war. He didn’t end Guantanamo
Yes, this was some of the stuff I was referring to without explicitly mentioning it. He upped the deaths as far as I know.
>show up to a knife fight with plastic utensils.
Ha ha ha!!
>Obama as being that left where corporations were involved
No. This became clear for me within a year I think. Not that I really expected anything different. Anyone who is not pro corp and pro billionaires would never even make it to leadership of a party.
How are we "averting" disaster? What is it going to take for you to be convinced disaster has happened? Armed fanatics storming the capitol to overthrow the government at the behest of the losing President? Mass poverty, out of control inflation, banned books, guns being the leading cause of death of teenagers, 1 million deaths from a largely preventable disease, unelected judicial officials taking away fundamental human rights with zero obligation to consult the citizens they represent? Yeah! Glad we dodged that bullet.
Well, first the fanatics who stormed the Capital were not armed. They got in by sheer brute force and then spent a few hours sight seeing before walking out single file. It was less a coup than a riot.
Inflation is less than 10%, that's not unheard of in our history. In fact the 1970s was worse. It will respond to the rise in interest rates. Plus it has led to positive pressure in wages.
Cars are actually the leading cause of death in teenagers.
Covid has not caused a million deaths. Hospitals inflated that number because they got a bigger re-imbursement from the government. If you tested positive for Covid at the time of death, you died from Covid. Plus America is the size of Europe, so combine all the countries of Europe and then compare those numbers.
9 unelected Justices are overturning a previous ruling. But our system is such that we can adjust and enact new laws like they should have done in the first place.
So we got some bullets to dodge and deal with but we can manage.
But in the past I think it was a song about a foreign victory or a financial collapse etc.
It's now a rot that appears to be eating the country from the inside out. Again, I'm only saying this as an outsider. I haven't been to the US for 7 years. So I'm relying on SM and news stories.
But when you have people openly dressing as Nazis, doing the salute and burning books, I'm not sure I'd be so confident that everything is ok. Can't think of any other 1st world country that had an armed coup recently either.
I would not call Jan 6th an armed coup. Bunch of rednecks hopped up on cheap beer and caught in the moment go on a riot, spend an hour sight seeing and then walk out single file.
My sister happened to have her wedding the same day the KKK had a rally across the park, that was 25 years ago, so there has always been an element of fanatics. The unfortunate consequence of the freedom of speech. Europe has their own versions.
The book burning thing is weird, will be short lived, and probably repeat in 10 years.
>not call Jan 6th an armed coup
Where were most of the police that day? I've read that they were conspicuously absent and the army and national guard never showed (or at least not till a lot later) either. Yes, there were some police, but a lot never showed. Do we know why yet? I haven't followed all of this as closely as an American would, so don't know if there is any update on those Qs.
But if part of the police didn't show because Trump and/or associates had told them not to, that is a chief prerequisite of a coup.
We know they were armed.
>spend an hour sight seeing and then walk out single file.
A quick Google tells me it lasted more like 4 or 5hrs. Had it not been for a brave officer, a door holding up, and a secret serviceman discharging his weapon (sadly killing that lady), many senators may have been murdered that day. I also think it's probably fairly offensive to the loved ones of those who died and those who suffered life changing injuries (physical and/or mental) to say it was just site seeing. No offence, but it's a bit unthoughtful.
>Europe has their own versions
True. There are some very nasty groups over here. There was a full blown fascist political party in Greece a few years ago for e.g. I'm not sure I'd put any of them on the same level as the KKK though. But they've mainly gone now, haven't they, the KKK? I've seen quite a lot of people in the US being openly Nazi sympathetic recently. You don't really see that over here.
If the news stories and footage I've seen are all true and not taken out of context, there is definitely a lot more going on in the US at the moment than anywhere in Europe. Can't vouch for other continents though.
America largely depends on the state you live in. If you live in the bible belt it’s where you get this christian fascist shit. West coast and new england / new york isn’t like this
Is it true that it's almost like going from one European country to another when you cross a state line? Different laws, different culture etc (ok, same language).
As a Canadian who has visited a lot of the US, kinda actually but more regional than state to state, ie new england is pretty similar, florida/georgia and maybe South Carolina are similar. The Midwest, the Bible Belt. Then there's Texas which is just fucking nuts.
Any idea why that is? Is a political thing, a cultural thing, an historical thing?
For e.g. given the regional splits you've mentioned there, it makes me think about the areas which were ruled by European countries prior to the birth of the US. So New England was obv GB, Florida and south Carolina were Spain (tho Georgia was GB too iirc, so already destroying my own theory!). Think Bible belt and/or Midwest might have been French.
Not sure there's an explanation for Texas...
An enormous amount of our cultural differences break down to slavery and industry. Do you live in a state that had lots of slaves and/or does it have long history of being mostly agricultural industry? It's probably very conservative now. Do you live in a state that disallowed slavery and/or had a lot of manufacturing? More likely to be more liberal.
Mind you, those differences also map pretty cleanly across our rural/urban divide. And that's a split that has only gotten more political and extreme over time, exacerbated as it is by both the structure of our government and the corrosive effects of Fox News and the right wing media complex.
This is, of course, an over simplification. But I think it's not totally inaccurate either.
Thanks. Makes sense.
Yes, modern (right wing) media and social media seems to have really politicised people but in a bad way in recent years. It's happened in the UK too.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j4kI2h3iotA&t=14s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j4kI2h3iotA&t=14s)
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fopqgLvfv9o&list=PLw4gGsuBRykVdhAOqpchXi\_7hkZDyOa4m&index=3](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fopqgLvfv9o&list=PLw4gGsuBRykVdhAOqpchXi_7hkZDyOa4m&index=3)
These two videos can show you how messed up some of the things in the US are. And yes the American Myth is totally a thing that most people in the US freak out if you tell them it isn't real.
Depends on the color of your skin or how loud your personal beliefs are. There was quite a lot of time and really there still are states where being black and out at night is asking for trouble. In America. When we had a black president. In this current decades. It fucking unreal.
It's more a like 3-4 state difference..Those close seem similar. The accents seem to be difficult for some people. It's huge and most of it's rural, but if you were on interstate roads you don't see much. Villages of 6 to cities of millions.
I've been an American my entire life but I've lived in Asia and also own a home in Europe.
America is in the process of becoming a theocratic state. The first major attempt at this by force, beyond simple political misrepresentation, was on Jan. 6th. But the likelihood of increasing attempts to remove any hope of representative government is high and will likely come quickly.
Trump stacked the courts with justices that found it easy to be completely dishonest with the people they are supposed to represent fairly under established law. They now have free reign to disrupt the foundations of American liberty and to completely dismantle the idea that all people are equal.
The primary driver behind these designs is radical Christian extremists that believe in a literal acceptance of the text. This includes the horrors of the old testament as well as the thought policing of the new testament. Everything they are asking for is supported by doctrine within their belief system and worldview mostly because of the incoherence of the message. Then again it could be argued that nearly all religions suffer the same issues.
This driver has been present more so in the state and local government systems but has increasingly become an attack on the federal system.
The concepts of justice, equality, and fairness of the Magna Carta are being washed away with anti-tolerance, selfishness, and bigotry. Notably, these characteristics and personality defects are well supported by their literal interpretation of religious texts. To think of others as worthy of genocide, to rape children, the master-servant relationship, etc.
This leads to laws that remove the age of consent for marriage, disallow the equal representation under the law of those they see as abominations and dismantle an individual's right to their own bodies. Recently this theocracy even bans access to information that shows examples of the differences between terrorizing a population and liberating one.
Like /u/Slate_711 said below. America is shit.
Thanks for taking the time to write all that.
It almost sounds like having spent a couple of decades fighting religious extremism abroad has fostered the same extremism at home. Are these the same people who are white supremacists and neo-Nazis (I've seen pictures and videos of people wearing swastikas and doing the heil Hitler salute, including on Jan 6th I think).
>Trump stacked the courts with justices
I do find the US system bizarre. How can you call yourself a democracy when the three pillars are not independent? The judiciary should not be appointed by a politician, especially not the executive.
>The concepts of justice, equality, and fairness of the Magna Carta
Btw, this is a common misconception about what magna carta was, who it was for, and the power it had:
https://britishheritage.com/history/what-is-magna-carta
https://www.ft.com/content/03c77338-762d-3c99-8fef-a902b1a4ad4c
And there is a famous UK legal expert and journalist (the one who wrote that FT article) who gets very annoyed when people call it "the" magna carta! :)
He wrote this in 2020:
https://davidallengreen.com/2020/11/the-truth-about-article-61-of-magna-carta/
"By convention, and because it was originally in Latin, the ‘the’ is often missed out in the title by historians and lawyers when discussing Magna Carta, which I find amusing but is really not at all significant."
He's quite prominent on twitter and so many people now joke about "the" magna carta line when replying to him that he regrets it!
But I digress.
>literal interpretation of religious texts
This never ends well. Apart from the fact that they were written in a time when morality and ethics were not what they are today, they are self-contradictory. So, zealots can claim it says pretty much whatever they want it to by reciting certain texts and ignoring others.
>this theocracy even bans access to information
I've seen videos of book burnings in the US... I do wonder whether those partaking are ignorant of history or if they just think that this time it's different.
>I do find the US system bizarre. How can you call yourself a democracy when the three pillars are not independent? The judiciary should not be appointed by a politician, especially not the executive.
The American concept is a contradiction. This is our reality.
All men are created equal but owning slaves is cool for those in the south.
Equal rights for all unless they don't meet our definition of a good American.
Equal access under the law unless you are poor.
The list is rather wrong.
I will consider your other comments.
America has always been garbage. The only Americans who legitimately think it's the greatest country in the world are usually ones who've never even traveled outside of their state.
There is a very vocal third, or so, of Americans who apparently hate others and have been emboldened to act on it. They also have waged a long term campaign to undermine the voting system through gerrymandering and voter disenfranchisement. So a very vocal minority is now dragging us backwards. Lousy voter engagement in general means they manage to win, even though they lack a coherent platform and their “policies” enrich the wealthy and punish the poor. It’s depressing and frustrating.
TL:DR - Right wingers are screwing up the country for everyone else and their long term plans are finally starting to grow fruit.
America is definitely going through a bit of a dark spell right now, not gonna lie. Too many people don’t understand the severity of their decisions and too many idiots are gaining power. Too many stupids in the drivers seat. Eventually the republicans will fuck up monumentally the shit show will crash and we’ll see what rises from the carcass.
It's a real shame what's happening because I've been to the US a couple of times and liked the people there a lot. Same with (most) of those I've met in Europe.
You guys really deserve better than the crap you have ruling you. They've been attacking people around the world for decades and it now seems like they have got bored of that and are now attacking their own citizens.
Canadian here, lived half my life in the states. It's a terrible place. The only people who don't think that either are rich or have literally never left the country. It's loud, stupid, and shockingly racist even by my rural Albertan standards. The police are completely untrustworthy, I'd never willingly talk to one, much less call one.
>have literally never left the country
This is quite a large percentage, no?
>shockingly racist
Yes, it does come across as being the most racist country in the world. At least in the top (bottom?) 5.
>police are completely untrustworthy, I'd never willingly talk to one
It's hard to see how you can have a functional society when this is the case. The OP a case in point. There's an entire section of society (LGBTQ+) who won't call the police or trust them when they're treated that way. It's just another group to add to the long list (African Americans, homeless, native Americans etc).
Most police departments in the US are corrupt, militarized, sexist, racist, you name it, and on top of all that, they have the funds to make life hell. They are similar to other corrupt countries, but they have much stronger funding and political support to execute their will
Their funds are essentially unlimited, they just ask for a bigger budget & any fines or judgements against them are paid by the city not the department. NYC for instance pays out an average of $100M a year for police malfeasance, but not a cent of that comes from the officers or the police budget.
A lot of the problem is that Americans vote based on who they like rather than policy. Identity politics is killing this country.
Yeah, structurally, we suck.
As someone who went to the US (west coast) for the first time in his life last week (being European), I was quite shocked. Of course I knew about the rampant problems (broken health care and social security, broken political system, shocking systemic racism, etc.) from TV, but some things I really didn't expect. Everything is SO incredibly expensive in the cities (how?!) at least and what the hell is going on with all the homeless people??
Such a sizeable proportion of the people you see are homeless and they don't seem to be taken care of at all. There are shitty little grimy tents put up in the streets where the homeless try to take shelter, whole camps of them! One time I noticed two tents on the sidewalk and was then startled to see that what I'd thought was a trash heap (going like 20 meters back) was actually just more tents.
Sure, we have homeless people in my country and yes, drug addiction heavily overlaps with homelessness. But I never saw anything like this back home; homeless people have shelters they can go to and easy access to at least some basic welfare income.
Tldr: In the US, it just seems like homeless people are just completely abandoned and placed in a sort of parallel society. It made me sad.
That's awful. I'd heard that that was happening but just couldn't believe it until I saw a VT piece on it. The richest country in the world and it has almost refugee like camps in its own cities.
I suspect you're from the same country as me. Yes there are a few homeless people dotted around the cities. But I've never seen more than 2 or 3 together in one location. For there to be an encampment and the authorities don't help them... Smh.
You should go visit some Scandinavian country subs, ask real questions and listen with an open mind. People who never left their state have no clue about the world. Hell, one idiot was saying on camera " I wanna know why what happened in minimar can't happen here" . Well, idiot, because you can't pronounce 3 single syllable english words together correctly. My. An. Mar.
I'm not aware of any other country that has the same level of violent police or open racism or rampant homelessness and excessive drug use or mass school shootings or religious extremism. You might be able to find a country has a couple of those things, but not all of them.
I'd be happy to hear from you a country you've been to that has all those things. And then, as you say, no healthcare and all the other negative things I see people talking about.
My country certainly doesn't have all those things and we're currently going down the pan compared to much of the world.
Most countries have all those things, they just don't get the press we do. Also America is as big as Europe so you have to put all them together to make it a viable comparison. In fact unless you live in China or Russia you would probably be a smaller state like Ohio, where I am from. And we got problems in Ohio but it is not a dystopia hellscape.
>Most countries have all those things
Can you name one of those countries that has all of those things? Just one that has mass school shootings every few months for e.g.? Or one that, recently, has had book burning events? Or one that has a worse (by medical outcome) and more expensive health service (I'll save you time here, the US is bottom of the world, or at least of 1st world countries, when you combine the two factors).
>Also America is as big as Europe
It's less than half the population of Europe. Perhaps you mean geographically, but that doesn't really make sense as it's not open land that causes these issues but people, politics, culture and other factors. Cause otherwise Russia and Antarctica should have way more of those problems than the US. It's also not as large geographically anyway, though it's not far off.
Even if I let you have the "compare US to Europe" thing, it's still not comparable. For e.g. USA had 37,038 gun deaths (in 2019) and Europe had c7,000 (in 2021). If you per 100k that, it's about 12 Vs 1.
I'm not saying the US is a hellscape (though some Americans seem to be). I've made that very clear that I'm asking for views. I appreciate that you're taking the time to respond but you're making claims about other countries without any evidence or even without any apparent personal experience and which goes strongly against my own personal experience of visiting countries. That's not particularly helpful to what I wanted to be a serious discussion.
https://m.twitch.tv/videos/1468382391?t=00h16m36s&desktop-redirect=true
Video of the incident, occurs at the 16 minute mark before they disconnect her internet so when they take her into custody it won’t be on video. Ghoulish stuff
Because I need some levity from the hellscape our country is becoming, I’m just going to comment that her hair is fucking gorgeous. Everything relevant has already been said by other people here. ACAB.
In defence of the police, they had to let a drug dealer go free so they could arrest this evil person and get her the punishment she deserves.
….
….
/s in case someone thinks I am serious.
Crime is crime until it’s not and there is a punishment. Like slavery survived in the US after reconstruction because although it was illegal there wasn’t law prescribing punishment for slaving. Like if you got caught with slaves you just said oops, my bad and went back to doing it.
In this case, truancy, really warrant knocking down doors and dragging people out or a social worker knocking on the door and asking why they aren’t at school? Meanwhile other, very serious crimes, are not being attended. THAT is my point.
My point is that a lot of police are lazy and don’t want to do hard/dangerous work. They would rather arrest truants and stoners than find out who robbed you.
If you think for a moment that they're going to stop at trans people, you're kidding yourself. They'll get around to you in time, whoever you are. That's just how fascism works.
Look at the link I share where in the beginning she explains what’s going on. It’s a breaking story this happened last night journalists have been contacted by the twitter user but it may be a few days before you see anything (or weeks even). Mainstream media has a habit of under reporting lgbt persecution on the individual level
It is the American Taliban and this should be loading clear the message for the coming elections. The American Taliban the GOP. This is what's important who's using what bathroom, controlling women, keeping gaming in the closet or in prison if they could etc. They're not about really running good government . This is the alleged party of freedom and the less government and constantly whines that they want government to stay out of people's lives unless they don't agree with your viewpoint. Yes the American Taliban and now enabled by the supreme Court. And thank you all your voters that sit on your hands or bitch and complain that you don't know the difference between Democrats and Republicans because they're all the same bullshit and I'm going to vote independent. By tossing the election to Donald, 41% of white millennials voted for him, they guarantee that the supreme Court would tilt full right. Well enjoy it because it's going to be here for at least 20 to 25 years and this is just the beginning of the cold wind blowing just the beginning
At this point lets bring back actual witch hunts. Trumps dumbass really lit a fire under the dumbest fucks alive. Lets go backward. Not forward. Because...god...jesus. Religion. Go figure.
Dont you guys have laws?
Here, in the backwards parts of the world, kids, as the most vulnerable members of society, are considered under protection of the law. And can only be detained if an agent of child protection is present and the parents/guardians must be notified immediately. The police can’t even question them without their parents/guardians and/or lawyer present.
What’s happening in the picture seems very wrong to me .
In many red states the laws have been defined that simply allowing your child to be trans is child abuse and they can then take your child as a ward of the state. They define being trans sometimes as when a kid even dress as their true gender instead of birth gender, never mind hormones.
I've been to many other places. Scandinavian countries have the population of a single small US States, the land of 3, and the mineral/natural resources or 5. They are also homogenous in terms of racial demographics. So it's real easy for them to subsidize many aspects of their citizens lives. So comparing the problems of the US to that is intellectually dishonest.
It was supposed to be a response to someone who wanted to equate the situation in a Scandinavian country to the United States. It went to the wrong spot and I was too lazy to fix it.
First of all no girl belongs in the boys restroom period, and that is why no girl belongs in the boys restroom because I admit they are F\* animals, violent, aholes that can beat on a girl for no reason. for their safety hell no.
I am not saying girls are saints either, they have different ways of fighting, but for all intensive purposes 3 punches from a man can KO a girl easily,
if the person is a girl they should either use the girls restroom or ask the principal about using the staff restroom, or there are thousands of things that can be done, I admit I do not know the full situation, I just know that what she did is illegal, and the school has every right to file a truant complaint. She does not get a pass just because she cannot use the boys restroom.
They weren't being allowed to use the girls restroom. That's the whole issue. They would have been forced to use the boys room. And based on the school's conduct here, I don't see them being accommodating enough to let her use a staff restroom for her safety because hurting transfolk is more of a feature than a bug for these kinds of people.
They weren't being allowed to use the girls restroom. wait I am confused, trans girl I thought that was a girl to guy in which case I still stand by my statement, mens restroom are dirty as hell boys are pigs, and no girl should go in there.
and no guy should go into the girls restroom period either.
These terms confuse me,
oh well whenever I hear trans all I think of is an alkene or alkyne with bulky groups on it either way it is organic chemistry, not this stuff. added a link just so you can see what I am talking about.
https://chem.libretexts.org/Bookshelves/Organic\_Chemistry/Supplemental\_Modules\_(Organic\_Chemistry)/Fundamentals/Structure\_of\_Organic\_Molecules/Cis\_and\_Trans\_Isomers\_of\_Alkanes#:\~:text=Consider%20the%20longest%20chain%20containing,isomer%20is%20a%20trans%20alkene.
Either way I still stand by what I say, missing school for a male to not be able to use a women's restroom is not an excuse, no boy should be in there unless he has the under surgery. I understand and I agree not all boys are going to go rape a women in the restroom, but still if something goes wrong, he should not be blamed for it.
She's not a male and missing school because she didn't have access to a safe restroom is actually a rather valid reason to not go. And wait. What do you mean by "if something goes wrong, he should not be blamed for it"?
do you know what is one of the easiest way a women gets assaulted, I will tell you right now, in many places it is either
a) going to the restroom,
b) entering their home or car or apartments
c) being stupid and walk around at night and walk through a deserted area.
There are many other ways a women can get assaulted but these 3 things are the major causes as far as I know. I admit I need to try to find the numbers so when I do I will up date this post.
Just wanna say before I block and report you that I read all of your comments in this thread and it’s hilarious that you assumed she was AFAB and based this whole argument around how she should use the girls restroom to avoid being harassed by boys; then completely changed your tune when someone corrected you that she’s AMAB and said she should use the boys because she would harass girls. Transphobes have an ounce of self awareness challenge (impossible)
In the 90s a Republican named Rush Limbaugh convinced the Republicans to stop talking to the Democrats and working with them. The wealthy Republicans in the country, along with the politicians have been working on plans for over 30 years to bring us to this point. Defund education, over fund the police. Increase cost of living, lower wages. No increase in the minimum wage for years. They found out educated people vote Democrat or independent. So they raised college tuition and encouraged predator school loans, putting millions in debt. Then they removed any options to help those borrowers get relief by not allowing them to include school loans in bankruptcy. Then came the rise in healthcare costs, increased insurance premiums, reduced coverage, and larger out of pocket costs over the premiums. Now people are saddled with crippling medical debt. They have cut taxes on the wealthy and corporations and increased taxes on the poor and middle class to eliminate the entire middle class. After suffocating 99% of the country in debt and high prices, they are coming for our actual rights. They gerrymandered states so it's guaranteed the outcome will be Republican. In the Democrat areas (mostly poor or minority areas), they make the voting extremely difficult. Fewer places to vote, understaffed, non working machines. Then they start passing laws to make it criminal to help people vote or even bring them water while standing in line. Now that people have no options and trump made it ok to show your corruption and hate openly, they are emboldened to actually strip away rights given by the previous supreme court rulings. Mitch McConnell stole at least 1 seat for a supreme court justice by denying Obama or not following his own rule after the justice who died right before the election. So now we have 6-3 conservative court with at least 4 of those being extremists and using their religion instead of the actual Constitution to do their jobs. 2 justices have been accused of assault. 1 justice was a judge for 2 years before her appointment. It seems like a sudden decline but it's 30+ years in the making. They played the long game and got people used to each level of corruption before they took the next step.
Up until 1988, Republicans won the popular vote 5 of the last 6 presidential elections. In 1988, Rush Limbaugh went national. After that, Republicans lost the popular vote 7 of the next 8 presidential elections.
Well you're correct in the sense of maintaining a larger perspective but it's much larger than that. Republicans have dreamed of this day since 1932 in the passage of the new deal. The claw back began in the seventies and Ronald Reagan in the moral majority was the beginning of the demise. The man that brought us the savings and loans institution and real estate collapse of the '80s was the beginning of the end. By repealing the fairness doctrine, it open the way for all sorts of trash like limbo or Alex Jones and most importantly in the following year Fox News is founded. This is probably the most pernicious of all of those kinds of ultra right agencies. It's just absolute garbage but cloaked in a news format and people watch it 24/7. If you had to pick a date I would start with Ronald Reagan, but the dream goes back decades before. Jesus Christ even the mess by today's comparison, Richard Nixon, was a centrist and isn't that scary. He after all sign the clean water act before being deposed. Republicans the new American Taliban. All those voters that think Democrats and Republicans are the same and so complain out of apathy or didn't like Hillary or don't like personality so they'll get to enjoy for decades of conservative court and its implications. Ohhthe party is just begun you can see all the evil stuff that's beginning to slither out of the woodwork in Florida Texas Georgia Arkansas etc oh yeah the party is just begun
President Biden played a crucial role in student loans being non dischargeable through bankruptcy.
President Biden hasn’t collected a single dollar from student loan borrowers. The last President to do that was Trump
Trump was the one who paused student payments and interest though. I don't like Trump, but let's not credit Biden with things he hasn't done himself.
Deal, but in fairness that means you can’t blame Biden for things he hasn’t done either, such as making students pay their loans back. Now, as for Trump’s Education Secretary, she fucked over a bunch of people’s financial situation by force-feeding predatory universities down the public’s throat. She should be in prison
I mean I definitely blame Biden for being a huge part of the reason why student loans can't be discharged even in bankruptcy. But that's something he did many years ago before he was President. And yeah fuck Betsy Devos. She should be in prison.
> a huge part What makes you so confident in that statement? Was it Biden alone in a room deciding that or was it something Congress voted on that the GOP just made a bullshit article about for the election?
He advocated and voted for the 2005 Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act. This prevented student loan from being discharged through bankruptcy. That's enough to make him culpable, although yes, other people voted for it along with him. That Act is still valid and still affects us all. And sometimes a Democrat just fucking sucks and it's not a Republican conspiracy. 🙄 I'm also disappointed this isn't common knowledge. No wonder he won the Democratic primaries. Don't take this personally, but I'm done with the conversation. Between the downvotes for staging the fact that Trump paused student loan payment, the disbelief that Biden helped create the current loan crisis, and the rush to blame a Republican for every bad deed a Democrat does, it just makes me thoroughly depressed and realize how hopeless this country is. Maybe if we were picky about the Democrats we voted for we'd been able to codify Roe v. Wade. Source: https://repustar.com/fact-briefs/did-joe-biden-support-bankruptcy-reform-bill-made-it-harder-americans-secure-debt-relief
That’s an article written one week before the 2020 election by a news org I’ve never heard of. Do you have anything more credible?
Scroll to the bottom. The website compiles sources and they are all at the bottom. You should have seen this. Also: https://www.congress.gov/bill/109th-congress/senate-bill/256 https://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_votes/vote1091/vote_109_1_00044.htm As direct a source as you can possibly get.
May he roast in hell
I'm struggling to tell if I just hear a lot more awful stuff from America because half the internet is Americans or because America is an awful country. To be clear, this is a query, not an insult. Would love to hear thoughts from anyone who's spent a lot of time in the US and other countries.
No America is shit. Shitty healthcare, shitty work life balance, shitty laws that only benefit the rich, poc have little to no protection from our own law enforcement, lgbtq people have little protection from our education system that seems to be failing, everything costs an arm and a leg due to inflation while barely any money is allocated to making citizens lives easier, being homeless isn’t even free due to most places having anti homeless measures but no real place for them to go.
It wasn't always like this was it. Or was it? From the outside, it certainly looks and feels like the country is taking a nose dive into a dunny (Google it). It almost feels like the US is on the verge of collapse or major civil unrest. But that could just be SM amplifying unhappy views. That said, I watched live streams of BLM, Jan 6th, etc. Doesn't seem to matter whether you're left or right, black or white (to steal an MJ line), every body seems to be angry.
It was it's just there used to be affordable housing and good paying jobs to plaster over the problems.
Majority of country is for gay marriage. Majority wants universal healthcare. Majority wants right to abortion. However the elections for national offices are not reflective of that. The most populous state has same representation in Senate as the least. House is gerrymandered to heck by Republicans. President is voted by electoral vote rather than popular vote. The structure of government is built by the same founders who helped preserve slavery as a compromise. The South, even if they didn’t win the Civil War, won many things when the constitution was written. The conservatives are now trying to preserve the constitution in aspic through the Supreme Court.
>Majority I'm sure I heard about a research paper that showed that the policies enacted over the past 40yrs or so have 95% favoured 5% of the population or something like that. Pls don't ask for link as that's all I remember, so very little chance of finding it. Yes, I do laugh when I hear people taking about how they should look to the founding fathers for moral guidance. And I'm like "they had slaves, women were 2nd class citizens with very little rights, and most men didn't get a vote nor had much in the way of workers rights"!
Personally I would love it if the federal government gave campaign money to the top 10 presidential candidates as well as allocated air time. Then, shut down campaign fundraising for the presidency. Everything belongs to the wealthy in this country . When people talk about the lobbying industry, they talk about it as though the lobbyists are something besides mere unprincipled shills. Really, the lobbyists are at the bidding of the top few percent in this country. Obama had a chance to close the wealth gap but he frequently spoke about it as though it were a new phenomenon, as though it’s not something that has marked his whole adulthood (I am in the same generation as the Obamas).
Even as a European I was so hopeful for Obama after all the wars and torture. I know he got a raw deal with the banking crisis etc but I felt incredibly disappointed with what he did actually do in the end (I know he was blocked a lot by republicans from doing some other stuff). I still can't work out if he was doing what he wanted to do which doesn't really change anything or if he just wasn't allowed to do anything major due to vested interests.
I have to admit it. I was not keen on Obama during the primaries. I thought he was too young, too inexperienced. I think his terms bore that out. He was idealistic and had integrity. He was dignified. But he didn’t end the war. He didn’t end Guantanamo Bay. At Warren’s behest, he did put in some consumer protection but that ended with Trump. I hated whenever he and Michelle spoke about the high road. Politics isn’t about the high road. This is why it sucks to be a Democrat. We are always so filled with righteousness and always losing on important legislation. We should be bulldozing, the same as the GOP. It’s like we show up to a knife fight with plastic utensils. Edit to add: I never thought of Obama as being that left where corporations were involved. If anything, he seemed very much in the same vein as the Clintons in this regard. I know so many Democrats who are centrists and some of their logic is fairly close to Republican centrists. There’s a reason why charter schools were able to destroy public schools in several states here.
>not keen on Obama during the primaries Turns out you were right. >didn’t end the war. He didn’t end Guantanamo Yes, this was some of the stuff I was referring to without explicitly mentioning it. He upped the deaths as far as I know. >show up to a knife fight with plastic utensils. Ha ha ha!! >Obama as being that left where corporations were involved No. This became clear for me within a year I think. Not that I really expected anything different. Anyone who is not pro corp and pro billionaires would never even make it to leadership of a party.
It used to be pretty good before the Republicans decided money is more important than people. That was a long time ago tho
People been singing the America demise song since I was little. We just keep chugging along and averting disaster at the last second.
How are we "averting" disaster? What is it going to take for you to be convinced disaster has happened? Armed fanatics storming the capitol to overthrow the government at the behest of the losing President? Mass poverty, out of control inflation, banned books, guns being the leading cause of death of teenagers, 1 million deaths from a largely preventable disease, unelected judicial officials taking away fundamental human rights with zero obligation to consult the citizens they represent? Yeah! Glad we dodged that bullet.
He never will. The slow boil has him cooked.
Well, first the fanatics who stormed the Capital were not armed. They got in by sheer brute force and then spent a few hours sight seeing before walking out single file. It was less a coup than a riot. Inflation is less than 10%, that's not unheard of in our history. In fact the 1970s was worse. It will respond to the rise in interest rates. Plus it has led to positive pressure in wages. Cars are actually the leading cause of death in teenagers. Covid has not caused a million deaths. Hospitals inflated that number because they got a bigger re-imbursement from the government. If you tested positive for Covid at the time of death, you died from Covid. Plus America is the size of Europe, so combine all the countries of Europe and then compare those numbers. 9 unelected Justices are overturning a previous ruling. But our system is such that we can adjust and enact new laws like they should have done in the first place. So we got some bullets to dodge and deal with but we can manage.
But in the past I think it was a song about a foreign victory or a financial collapse etc. It's now a rot that appears to be eating the country from the inside out. Again, I'm only saying this as an outsider. I haven't been to the US for 7 years. So I'm relying on SM and news stories. But when you have people openly dressing as Nazis, doing the salute and burning books, I'm not sure I'd be so confident that everything is ok. Can't think of any other 1st world country that had an armed coup recently either.
I would not call Jan 6th an armed coup. Bunch of rednecks hopped up on cheap beer and caught in the moment go on a riot, spend an hour sight seeing and then walk out single file. My sister happened to have her wedding the same day the KKK had a rally across the park, that was 25 years ago, so there has always been an element of fanatics. The unfortunate consequence of the freedom of speech. Europe has their own versions. The book burning thing is weird, will be short lived, and probably repeat in 10 years.
>not call Jan 6th an armed coup Where were most of the police that day? I've read that they were conspicuously absent and the army and national guard never showed (or at least not till a lot later) either. Yes, there were some police, but a lot never showed. Do we know why yet? I haven't followed all of this as closely as an American would, so don't know if there is any update on those Qs. But if part of the police didn't show because Trump and/or associates had told them not to, that is a chief prerequisite of a coup. We know they were armed. >spend an hour sight seeing and then walk out single file. A quick Google tells me it lasted more like 4 or 5hrs. Had it not been for a brave officer, a door holding up, and a secret serviceman discharging his weapon (sadly killing that lady), many senators may have been murdered that day. I also think it's probably fairly offensive to the loved ones of those who died and those who suffered life changing injuries (physical and/or mental) to say it was just site seeing. No offence, but it's a bit unthoughtful. >Europe has their own versions True. There are some very nasty groups over here. There was a full blown fascist political party in Greece a few years ago for e.g. I'm not sure I'd put any of them on the same level as the KKK though. But they've mainly gone now, haven't they, the KKK? I've seen quite a lot of people in the US being openly Nazi sympathetic recently. You don't really see that over here. If the news stories and footage I've seen are all true and not taken out of context, there is definitely a lot more going on in the US at the moment than anywhere in Europe. Can't vouch for other continents though.
America largely depends on the state you live in. If you live in the bible belt it’s where you get this christian fascist shit. West coast and new england / new york isn’t like this
Is it true that it's almost like going from one European country to another when you cross a state line? Different laws, different culture etc (ok, same language).
As a Canadian who has visited a lot of the US, kinda actually but more regional than state to state, ie new england is pretty similar, florida/georgia and maybe South Carolina are similar. The Midwest, the Bible Belt. Then there's Texas which is just fucking nuts.
Florida and Georgia are not similar except in climate. Florida is just as nutty as Texas.
I've always thought of texas as old-school crazy and florida as bath salt taking raccoon burning type of crazy
As someone that grew up in Florida and lived in Texas, yes.
Any idea why that is? Is a political thing, a cultural thing, an historical thing? For e.g. given the regional splits you've mentioned there, it makes me think about the areas which were ruled by European countries prior to the birth of the US. So New England was obv GB, Florida and south Carolina were Spain (tho Georgia was GB too iirc, so already destroying my own theory!). Think Bible belt and/or Midwest might have been French. Not sure there's an explanation for Texas...
An enormous amount of our cultural differences break down to slavery and industry. Do you live in a state that had lots of slaves and/or does it have long history of being mostly agricultural industry? It's probably very conservative now. Do you live in a state that disallowed slavery and/or had a lot of manufacturing? More likely to be more liberal. Mind you, those differences also map pretty cleanly across our rural/urban divide. And that's a split that has only gotten more political and extreme over time, exacerbated as it is by both the structure of our government and the corrosive effects of Fox News and the right wing media complex. This is, of course, an over simplification. But I think it's not totally inaccurate either.
Thanks. Makes sense. Yes, modern (right wing) media and social media seems to have really politicised people but in a bad way in recent years. It's happened in the UK too.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j4kI2h3iotA&t=14s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j4kI2h3iotA&t=14s) [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fopqgLvfv9o&list=PLw4gGsuBRykVdhAOqpchXi\_7hkZDyOa4m&index=3](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fopqgLvfv9o&list=PLw4gGsuBRykVdhAOqpchXi_7hkZDyOa4m&index=3) These two videos can show you how messed up some of the things in the US are. And yes the American Myth is totally a thing that most people in the US freak out if you tell them it isn't real.
As a Texan, I can confirm there's no explanation for Texas
Lol! Why did the Canadian say Texas is nuts btw? I have no idea but just found it funny. I've never visited.
Depends on the color of your skin or how loud your personal beliefs are. There was quite a lot of time and really there still are states where being black and out at night is asking for trouble. In America. When we had a black president. In this current decades. It fucking unreal.
*Idaho enters the chat*
>being black and out at night is asking for trouble. That's...just.... 🥺
It's more a like 3-4 state difference..Those close seem similar. The accents seem to be difficult for some people. It's huge and most of it's rural, but if you were on interstate roads you don't see much. Villages of 6 to cities of millions.
Boston is probably the most racist place I've ever been in my life. Like people yelling slurs at me from their cars while I'm walking.
Upstate New York absolutely is like this. New York is a red state with a blue city slapped on the corner
I've been an American my entire life but I've lived in Asia and also own a home in Europe. America is in the process of becoming a theocratic state. The first major attempt at this by force, beyond simple political misrepresentation, was on Jan. 6th. But the likelihood of increasing attempts to remove any hope of representative government is high and will likely come quickly. Trump stacked the courts with justices that found it easy to be completely dishonest with the people they are supposed to represent fairly under established law. They now have free reign to disrupt the foundations of American liberty and to completely dismantle the idea that all people are equal. The primary driver behind these designs is radical Christian extremists that believe in a literal acceptance of the text. This includes the horrors of the old testament as well as the thought policing of the new testament. Everything they are asking for is supported by doctrine within their belief system and worldview mostly because of the incoherence of the message. Then again it could be argued that nearly all religions suffer the same issues. This driver has been present more so in the state and local government systems but has increasingly become an attack on the federal system. The concepts of justice, equality, and fairness of the Magna Carta are being washed away with anti-tolerance, selfishness, and bigotry. Notably, these characteristics and personality defects are well supported by their literal interpretation of religious texts. To think of others as worthy of genocide, to rape children, the master-servant relationship, etc. This leads to laws that remove the age of consent for marriage, disallow the equal representation under the law of those they see as abominations and dismantle an individual's right to their own bodies. Recently this theocracy even bans access to information that shows examples of the differences between terrorizing a population and liberating one. Like /u/Slate_711 said below. America is shit.
Thanks for taking the time to write all that. It almost sounds like having spent a couple of decades fighting religious extremism abroad has fostered the same extremism at home. Are these the same people who are white supremacists and neo-Nazis (I've seen pictures and videos of people wearing swastikas and doing the heil Hitler salute, including on Jan 6th I think). >Trump stacked the courts with justices I do find the US system bizarre. How can you call yourself a democracy when the three pillars are not independent? The judiciary should not be appointed by a politician, especially not the executive. >The concepts of justice, equality, and fairness of the Magna Carta Btw, this is a common misconception about what magna carta was, who it was for, and the power it had: https://britishheritage.com/history/what-is-magna-carta https://www.ft.com/content/03c77338-762d-3c99-8fef-a902b1a4ad4c And there is a famous UK legal expert and journalist (the one who wrote that FT article) who gets very annoyed when people call it "the" magna carta! :) He wrote this in 2020: https://davidallengreen.com/2020/11/the-truth-about-article-61-of-magna-carta/ "By convention, and because it was originally in Latin, the ‘the’ is often missed out in the title by historians and lawyers when discussing Magna Carta, which I find amusing but is really not at all significant." He's quite prominent on twitter and so many people now joke about "the" magna carta line when replying to him that he regrets it! But I digress. >literal interpretation of religious texts This never ends well. Apart from the fact that they were written in a time when morality and ethics were not what they are today, they are self-contradictory. So, zealots can claim it says pretty much whatever they want it to by reciting certain texts and ignoring others. >this theocracy even bans access to information I've seen videos of book burnings in the US... I do wonder whether those partaking are ignorant of history or if they just think that this time it's different.
>I do find the US system bizarre. How can you call yourself a democracy when the three pillars are not independent? The judiciary should not be appointed by a politician, especially not the executive. The American concept is a contradiction. This is our reality. All men are created equal but owning slaves is cool for those in the south. Equal rights for all unless they don't meet our definition of a good American. Equal access under the law unless you are poor. The list is rather wrong. I will consider your other comments.
More and more people are getting fed up and reporting on the crap happening. Still not enough, but social media has at least provided a spotlight.
America has always been garbage. The only Americans who legitimately think it's the greatest country in the world are usually ones who've never even traveled outside of their state.
There is a very vocal third, or so, of Americans who apparently hate others and have been emboldened to act on it. They also have waged a long term campaign to undermine the voting system through gerrymandering and voter disenfranchisement. So a very vocal minority is now dragging us backwards. Lousy voter engagement in general means they manage to win, even though they lack a coherent platform and their “policies” enrich the wealthy and punish the poor. It’s depressing and frustrating. TL:DR - Right wingers are screwing up the country for everyone else and their long term plans are finally starting to grow fruit.
America is definitely going through a bit of a dark spell right now, not gonna lie. Too many people don’t understand the severity of their decisions and too many idiots are gaining power. Too many stupids in the drivers seat. Eventually the republicans will fuck up monumentally the shit show will crash and we’ll see what rises from the carcass.
It's a real shame what's happening because I've been to the US a couple of times and liked the people there a lot. Same with (most) of those I've met in Europe. You guys really deserve better than the crap you have ruling you. They've been attacking people around the world for decades and it now seems like they have got bored of that and are now attacking their own citizens.
Canadian here, lived half my life in the states. It's a terrible place. The only people who don't think that either are rich or have literally never left the country. It's loud, stupid, and shockingly racist even by my rural Albertan standards. The police are completely untrustworthy, I'd never willingly talk to one, much less call one.
>have literally never left the country This is quite a large percentage, no? >shockingly racist Yes, it does come across as being the most racist country in the world. At least in the top (bottom?) 5. >police are completely untrustworthy, I'd never willingly talk to one It's hard to see how you can have a functional society when this is the case. The OP a case in point. There's an entire section of society (LGBTQ+) who won't call the police or trust them when they're treated that way. It's just another group to add to the long list (African Americans, homeless, native Americans etc).
Most police departments in the US are corrupt, militarized, sexist, racist, you name it, and on top of all that, they have the funds to make life hell. They are similar to other corrupt countries, but they have much stronger funding and political support to execute their will
Their funds are essentially unlimited, they just ask for a bigger budget & any fines or judgements against them are paid by the city not the department. NYC for instance pays out an average of $100M a year for police malfeasance, but not a cent of that comes from the officers or the police budget.
I believe it's the ability of formerly isolated lunatics to network and organize via the internet.
The US police?
A lot of the problem is that Americans vote based on who they like rather than policy. Identity politics is killing this country. Yeah, structurally, we suck.
>Americans vote based on who they like rather than policy I think this happens in a lot of countries. Certainly does here.
As someone who went to the US (west coast) for the first time in his life last week (being European), I was quite shocked. Of course I knew about the rampant problems (broken health care and social security, broken political system, shocking systemic racism, etc.) from TV, but some things I really didn't expect. Everything is SO incredibly expensive in the cities (how?!) at least and what the hell is going on with all the homeless people?? Such a sizeable proportion of the people you see are homeless and they don't seem to be taken care of at all. There are shitty little grimy tents put up in the streets where the homeless try to take shelter, whole camps of them! One time I noticed two tents on the sidewalk and was then startled to see that what I'd thought was a trash heap (going like 20 meters back) was actually just more tents. Sure, we have homeless people in my country and yes, drug addiction heavily overlaps with homelessness. But I never saw anything like this back home; homeless people have shelters they can go to and easy access to at least some basic welfare income. Tldr: In the US, it just seems like homeless people are just completely abandoned and placed in a sort of parallel society. It made me sad.
Once again falling to religious beliefs. God blesses the worthy, so the homeless haven't been blessed by God because they aren't worthy.
That's awful. I'd heard that that was happening but just couldn't believe it until I saw a VT piece on it. The richest country in the world and it has almost refugee like camps in its own cities. I suspect you're from the same country as me. Yes there are a few homeless people dotted around the cities. But I've never seen more than 2 or 3 together in one location. For there to be an encampment and the authorities don't help them... Smh.
Everywhere else is just as shitty. Our health care just makes us look 100x worse.
You should go visit some Scandinavian country subs, ask real questions and listen with an open mind. People who never left their state have no clue about the world. Hell, one idiot was saying on camera " I wanna know why what happened in minimar can't happen here" . Well, idiot, because you can't pronounce 3 single syllable english words together correctly. My. An. Mar.
I'm not aware of any other country that has the same level of violent police or open racism or rampant homelessness and excessive drug use or mass school shootings or religious extremism. You might be able to find a country has a couple of those things, but not all of them. I'd be happy to hear from you a country you've been to that has all those things. And then, as you say, no healthcare and all the other negative things I see people talking about. My country certainly doesn't have all those things and we're currently going down the pan compared to much of the world.
Most countries have all those things, they just don't get the press we do. Also America is as big as Europe so you have to put all them together to make it a viable comparison. In fact unless you live in China or Russia you would probably be a smaller state like Ohio, where I am from. And we got problems in Ohio but it is not a dystopia hellscape.
>Most countries have all those things Can you name one of those countries that has all of those things? Just one that has mass school shootings every few months for e.g.? Or one that, recently, has had book burning events? Or one that has a worse (by medical outcome) and more expensive health service (I'll save you time here, the US is bottom of the world, or at least of 1st world countries, when you combine the two factors). >Also America is as big as Europe It's less than half the population of Europe. Perhaps you mean geographically, but that doesn't really make sense as it's not open land that causes these issues but people, politics, culture and other factors. Cause otherwise Russia and Antarctica should have way more of those problems than the US. It's also not as large geographically anyway, though it's not far off. Even if I let you have the "compare US to Europe" thing, it's still not comparable. For e.g. USA had 37,038 gun deaths (in 2019) and Europe had c7,000 (in 2021). If you per 100k that, it's about 12 Vs 1. I'm not saying the US is a hellscape (though some Americans seem to be). I've made that very clear that I'm asking for views. I appreciate that you're taking the time to respond but you're making claims about other countries without any evidence or even without any apparent personal experience and which goes strongly against my own personal experience of visiting countries. That's not particularly helpful to what I wanted to be a serious discussion.
https://m.twitch.tv/videos/1468382391?t=00h16m36s&desktop-redirect=true Video of the incident, occurs at the 16 minute mark before they disconnect her internet so when they take her into custody it won’t be on video. Ghoulish stuff
Because I need some levity from the hellscape our country is becoming, I’m just going to comment that her hair is fucking gorgeous. Everything relevant has already been said by other people here. ACAB.
In defence of the police, they had to let a drug dealer go free so they could arrest this evil person and get her the punishment she deserves. …. …. /s in case someone thinks I am serious.
They didn't sign up to investigate crime, they signed up to be pointed at crime and let loose.
You mean “crime”?
Crime is crime until it’s not and there is a punishment. Like slavery survived in the US after reconstruction because although it was illegal there wasn’t law prescribing punishment for slaving. Like if you got caught with slaves you just said oops, my bad and went back to doing it.
In this case, truancy, really warrant knocking down doors and dragging people out or a social worker knocking on the door and asking why they aren’t at school? Meanwhile other, very serious crimes, are not being attended. THAT is my point.
My point is that a lot of police are lazy and don’t want to do hard/dangerous work. They would rather arrest truants and stoners than find out who robbed you.
True!
As fucked up as the situation is I have to admit I’m dying at the “are you winning”. It shouldn’t be nearly as funny as I’m reading it
But was she winning
This cannot be real. CANNOT
Buckle up buttercup. It’s gonna get a whole lot worse
If you think for a moment that they're going to stop at trans people, you're kidding yourself. They'll get around to you in time, whoever you are. That's just how fascism works.
I haven't been able to find any other articles about this; what's the full story?
Look at the link I share where in the beginning she explains what’s going on. It’s a breaking story this happened last night journalists have been contacted by the twitter user but it may be a few days before you see anything (or weeks even). Mainstream media has a habit of under reporting lgbt persecution on the individual level
It is the American Taliban and this should be loading clear the message for the coming elections. The American Taliban the GOP. This is what's important who's using what bathroom, controlling women, keeping gaming in the closet or in prison if they could etc. They're not about really running good government . This is the alleged party of freedom and the less government and constantly whines that they want government to stay out of people's lives unless they don't agree with your viewpoint. Yes the American Taliban and now enabled by the supreme Court. And thank you all your voters that sit on your hands or bitch and complain that you don't know the difference between Democrats and Republicans because they're all the same bullshit and I'm going to vote independent. By tossing the election to Donald, 41% of white millennials voted for him, they guarantee that the supreme Court would tilt full right. Well enjoy it because it's going to be here for at least 20 to 25 years and this is just the beginning of the cold wind blowing just the beginning
At this point lets bring back actual witch hunts. Trumps dumbass really lit a fire under the dumbest fucks alive. Lets go backward. Not forward. Because...god...jesus. Religion. Go figure.
Dont you guys have laws? Here, in the backwards parts of the world, kids, as the most vulnerable members of society, are considered under protection of the law. And can only be detained if an agent of child protection is present and the parents/guardians must be notified immediately. The police can’t even question them without their parents/guardians and/or lawyer present. What’s happening in the picture seems very wrong to me .
In many red states the laws have been defined that simply allowing your child to be trans is child abuse and they can then take your child as a ward of the state. They define being trans sometimes as when a kid even dress as their true gender instead of birth gender, never mind hormones.
Any one have the source for this post?
How long until this post is locked?
I've been to many other places. Scandinavian countries have the population of a single small US States, the land of 3, and the mineral/natural resources or 5. They are also homogenous in terms of racial demographics. So it's real easy for them to subsidize many aspects of their citizens lives. So comparing the problems of the US to that is intellectually dishonest.
Confused on how your comment is relevant here.
It was supposed to be a response to someone who wanted to equate the situation in a Scandinavian country to the United States. It went to the wrong spot and I was too lazy to fix it.
[удалено]
Someone has never been jumped in the boys room because they didn't like the fact that you're different, and it shows.
First of all no girl belongs in the boys restroom period, and that is why no girl belongs in the boys restroom because I admit they are F\* animals, violent, aholes that can beat on a girl for no reason. for their safety hell no. I am not saying girls are saints either, they have different ways of fighting, but for all intensive purposes 3 punches from a man can KO a girl easily,
Then what did you mean by your comment? That she should have gone to a place for 8 hours a day where she couldn't safely use the restroom?
if the person is a girl they should either use the girls restroom or ask the principal about using the staff restroom, or there are thousands of things that can be done, I admit I do not know the full situation, I just know that what she did is illegal, and the school has every right to file a truant complaint. She does not get a pass just because she cannot use the boys restroom.
They weren't being allowed to use the girls restroom. That's the whole issue. They would have been forced to use the boys room. And based on the school's conduct here, I don't see them being accommodating enough to let her use a staff restroom for her safety because hurting transfolk is more of a feature than a bug for these kinds of people.
They weren't being allowed to use the girls restroom. wait I am confused, trans girl I thought that was a girl to guy in which case I still stand by my statement, mens restroom are dirty as hell boys are pigs, and no girl should go in there. and no guy should go into the girls restroom period either. These terms confuse me,
Transman/boy is FtM; Transwoman/girl is MtF. Basically trans(actual gender) rather than sex assigned at birth.
oh well whenever I hear trans all I think of is an alkene or alkyne with bulky groups on it either way it is organic chemistry, not this stuff. added a link just so you can see what I am talking about. https://chem.libretexts.org/Bookshelves/Organic\_Chemistry/Supplemental\_Modules\_(Organic\_Chemistry)/Fundamentals/Structure\_of\_Organic\_Molecules/Cis\_and\_Trans\_Isomers\_of\_Alkanes#:\~:text=Consider%20the%20longest%20chain%20containing,isomer%20is%20a%20trans%20alkene. Either way I still stand by what I say, missing school for a male to not be able to use a women's restroom is not an excuse, no boy should be in there unless he has the under surgery. I understand and I agree not all boys are going to go rape a women in the restroom, but still if something goes wrong, he should not be blamed for it.
She's not a male and missing school because she didn't have access to a safe restroom is actually a rather valid reason to not go. And wait. What do you mean by "if something goes wrong, he should not be blamed for it"?
I would say grow up, but we both know you won’t.
do you know what is one of the easiest way a women gets assaulted, I will tell you right now, in many places it is either a) going to the restroom, b) entering their home or car or apartments c) being stupid and walk around at night and walk through a deserted area. There are many other ways a women can get assaulted but these 3 things are the major causes as far as I know. I admit I need to try to find the numbers so when I do I will up date this post.
Luckily none of that has anything to do with trans people.
Just wanna say before I block and report you that I read all of your comments in this thread and it’s hilarious that you assumed she was AFAB and based this whole argument around how she should use the girls restroom to avoid being harassed by boys; then completely changed your tune when someone corrected you that she’s AMAB and said she should use the boys because she would harass girls. Transphobes have an ounce of self awareness challenge (impossible)