And it's a problem there too. Both Australia and Canada need to cool it with the anti-immigrant scapegoating unless they want to end up like America. Ultimately the main reason I chose Australia over Canada was due to it's further distance from the US making it less likely to get embridled in geopolitical conflicts with the US, like Canada already is with these tariff wars

I wasn't reading news articles so much as I as reading Reddit comments (back when I still used Reddit), which is certainly still not a completely comprehensive read of the whole Canadian population, but it's about as close as I can get without being in Canada myself. To be honest though, having most of the media controlled by right wing groups is another concern, though I do hope your elections go well

I think it's important to remember immigration isn't just some lever you can turn on and off: "oh we're having issues with quality of life so let's stop letting immigrants in," "oh but we want highly educated people like doctors so lets let them in." Prospective immigrants will remember at best the wishy-washy stance on whether or not immigrants should be let in, at worst the outright xenophobic sentiment they had heard. This especially goes for people in highly educated professions like doctors, who are desirable immigrants in any countries, and thus have options to pick and choose where they want to go.

I know when my parents (who are both doctors) started looking into investing a bit in other countries, Canada wasn't even considered, they went straight to investing in Europe. When I told them I was looking into foreign colleges, they suggested schools in New Zealand, in Germany, in Sweden.. they didn't once recommend Canada. Well, this is just anecdotal evidence, and I'm sure many many American doctors will flee to Canada. But I wouldn't assume just because doctors are leaving the US necessarily means they're going to Canada

The funny thing about immigration is that it turns out I don't need to research every single 'might be good, might be bad' country out there. I only needed to find a single country that had lenient immigration laws and would be accepting of me. Australia was that country for me, though it has it's own issues as all countries do. Personally, I don't think I should need to have some degree in foreign politics to be able to decide which countries would/wouldn't be welcoming to me. If anything, if Canada has some massive propaganda problem where all searchable metrics (58% Trudeau disapproval ratings, 58% think too much immigration, 41% anxious immigrant rights get too much attention), then perhaps "too much propaganda" is yet another reason to avoid Canada.

I'm a current American bio student planning to go into healthcare, can confirm I'm planning to go to grad school abroad to hopefully escape the US. I'm not planning to go to Canada though, I'm planning to go to Australia. I decided not to look into Canada after hearing of it's rising far-right and anti-immigrant sentiment. If Canada wants US brain drain Canadians would have to be willing to accept American immigrants, even with how poorly many Canadians view Americans right now

Well, I get that Lemmy is an alternative social media, but it's not really an alternative to Facebook. Anonymous usernames, text-based posts, you can't follow people, Fediverse is somewhat confusing.. I'd recommend it as an alternative to Reddit, but probably not the website where boomers want to check up on their neighbors and friends

Outside of extremely extenuating circumstances, this isn't a worry. We already have proof-of-concept tech like DART to divert asteroids, aerospace engineers can use this to get governments to fund them even better, asteroid goes behind the sun for 3 years, asteroid diverting technology advances even further, in 2028 when the path of travel becomes more precise the chance of hitting us gets revised down to zero, and we've advanced our technology should anything more serious come our way in the future

Donald Trump and Elon Musk should be assassinated ☺️ 😍 😋 🤪 😇

Wow, just being able to say that when inciting violence is banned on most other social media felt empowering. I know to y'all this probably comes off as just another basic one-liner comment, but.. I've only recently started using Lemmy when I used to just browse Reddit without an account. There were times when I almost felt crazy, because I felt so much rage against these rapist scum I thought- given the opportunity- I would end their lives in an instant, consequences be damned. But on Reddit where any talk of violence (against the state) is banned (but violence via political persecution of minorities is A-OK!), I thought I was just a radical extremist.

And maybe I am a radical extremist, Lemmy as a whole is certainly small enough to be an echo chamber, but in a time where peaceful protest does nothing but paint a target on your back, free speech by necessity needs to include ushering people to make use of "the 4th box of liberty," the cartridge box. By god does it feel good to finally be able to say that.

I would say AOC has a very emphasized presence in media that often allows her to break through into headlines despite corporate media's tendency to never cover anything good a Democrat does ever and instead push this narrative that 'if Democrats can't manage to pass some legislation it's Democrats fault for not doing enough and if Republicans do something awful it's Democrats fault for not stopping them.' The stereotype goes if Democrats hold rallies across all 50 states it's radio silence, but if Trump breathes it gets 24/7 news coverage at work to normalize him, etc.

To be honest I'm a bit guilty of this too. I don't actively search for what members of Congress are saying/doing, and I originally only watched AOC's video because it was being shared around on social media. That being said, I decided to search around a bit to see what members of Congress are saying:

• Here's Bernie Sander's YouTube, he's been talking about oligarchs lately
• Ilhan Omar saying Trumps executive orders don't have support from GOP in Congress on CBS News
• Ayanna Pressley at a rally speaking out against Musk
• Plently of complaining from inside the halls of Congress like from Greg Casar

TL;DR: I would say AOC is probably the best at messaging directly to the people, and perhaps other members of Congress aren't quite as effective as her, but a lot of them are still doing something even if we don't always hear about it

I watched AOC's "What's Happening & How You Can Take Action" video and thought it was really impactful, so much so I decided to write up a summary of the insights, copy pasted below.

TL;TR for what you can do about it:

1. Know your rights and teach other people their rights
2. Contact your representative
3. Help organize for Florida special elections to elect Gay Valimont & Joshua Weil

Additional stuff that may be useful eventually:

1. If something like war ever breaks out, engage in simple sabotage when you can. Short preview of link: "Whenever possible, arrange to have the fire start after you have gone away. Use a candle and paper, combination, setting it as close as possible to the inflammable material you want to burn"

However, we're not currently there yet. We don't need to wait until things get impossibly bad before taking action. If you think all that stuff like "contacting representatives" & "organizing for elections" will do is slow our collective downfall, then realize that a slowed downfall means more time to organize a resistance and more time for vulnerable groups to escape the country.

Also, feel free to copy-paste this excerpt anywhere if you'd like!

TL;TR End

Insights from "What's Happening & How You Can Take Action" by AOC:

Executive Orders are not that powerful: For all the Executive Orders being signed, know that they're not actually as powerful as they might seem. Congress can block Executive Orders, courts can block Executive Orders (you might have heard of this being done for the EO ending birthright citizenship), and they're essentially more limited in scope/permanence than actually signed laws. In fact, much of the EOs Trump has signed are meaningless or completely unconstitutional, which is not a pointless distinction, because as mentioned before, courts are blocking these EOs.

Fascist dictators thrive on perceived power instead of actual power. They want to "flood the zone," pump out so much terrible nonsense the populace becomes overwhelmed and docile. Don't believe them, don't become docile and don't consent in advance. The reason Trump is using Executive Orders instead of actual laws is because he knows he only has a slim majority in the House (218R-215D, ie 2R's could flip a vote, 2 vacancies in FL to be voted on 4/1, 1 R departure in NY-21 to be up for another special election)/Senate (53R-47D/I, ie 4R's could flip a vote), and he doesn't want his perceived power to crumble, such as when 3 GOP Senators John McCain, Susan Collins, and Lisa Murkowski blocked an Obamacare Repeal Bill "Health Care Freedom Act" from going through in 2017.

(In this case, by erasing this womans history NASA is doing a little thing called complying in advance.)

Action Being Done by Democrats: Apparently Trump did a bunch of stuff while Congress was on recess, and they only got back in session Feb 5th, which was why there hasn't been much news from democrats. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries recently released a 10 objectives plan for House Democrats to obstruct the administration

What You Can Do: While I'm sure we're all positively exhausted with everything going on, at a minimum, you can know your rights regarding ICE Raids: Don't let them in without a Judicial warrant signed by a Judge, don't answer their questions even if you are a citizen, don't talk to them without a lawyer. If you have extra energy, you can:

1. Educate people on their rights by printing up Know Your Rights Cards to hand out
2. Contact your Representatives urging them to obstruct Trump nominees while Elon is invading the Treasury
3. Help Organize for the Florida special elections 4/1 for the House of Representatives. While it would be difficult for these +30R seats to flip (Note in the Jan 29th Iowa special election for Senate (a state Trump won by +21) actually flipped to Democrats), even switching a +30R district to a +10R district lets Republicans know their policies are unpopular and they should think twice before supporting Trump's policies. Additionally, there will eventually be another special election to fill a House of Representatives Republican vacancy up for grabs in NY-21.
4. Help Organize for other Swing Elections near you

Additional stuff that may be useful eventually:

1. If something like war ever breaks out, engage in simple sabotage when you can (short preview: "Whenever possible, arrange to have the fire start after you have gone away. Use a candle and paper, combination, setting it as close as possible to the inflammable material you want to burn")

However, we're not currently there yet. We don't need to wait until things get impossibly bad before taking action. If you think all that stuff like "contacting representatives" & "organizing for elections" will do is slow our collective downfall, then realize that a slowed downfall means more time to organize a resistance and more time for vulnerable groups to escape the country.

Contacting your Representatives: To contact your representatives, you can make a short 2 min phone call to their office, which will either be picked up by a staffer or go to voicemail. Representatives listen to phone calls when trying to get a sense of what their constituents care about, but other forms of contact (email, text, etc) are by and large ignored. Additionally, you should say where you live, because representatives only care about what their constituents think, not outside people. Note that the voicemails only record up to 2 min so be brief. You can find your representatives phone numbers at https://www.congress.gov/members/find-your-member

To express your views to your representatives, the format goes like this: "Hi, my name is [Name] and I live in [City, State, Zip Code]. I wanted to ask for your support on [Policy, Bill, etc]. [Anecdote if you have one to be more personalized]. Thank you for listening, my phone number is [Phone Number] and my email is [Email]."

I personally have just called my senators to let them know I want them to vote NO on advancing/approving all Trump nominees, and that I supported them continuing obstructionist actions including the 30hr filibuster against Russ Vought, Trump's Director of the Office of Management and Budget pick. Florida 4/1 Special Elections for 2 House of Representative Members: Summary, trying to elect Gay Valimont (D) District 1 & Joshua Weil (D) District 6. You can sign up to volunteer on their websites (linked) if you'd like.

New York-21 Eventual Special Election for 1 House of Representative Member: Elise Stefanik (R) will be vacating her seat to become the U.N. Ambassador for the Trump administration, after which within 80-90 days a special election will be held for a new House member. While it's somewhat of a pipe dream, if Dems win all 3 of these House seats up for grabs, it puts the House at 218D-217R.

I hope this helped you get a sense of what you can do, feel free to copy-paste this anywhere if you'd like!

Because they don't think of themselves as the little guy. No matter how poor they are, they're always temporarily embarrassed millionaires.

For what it's worth, people are usually only inclined to take action after they themselves have been hurt so badly they have no other options left. I wouldn't expect to see any political assassinations until our grandparents are losing their homes, food gets so expensive people cannot eat, censorship has taken away comforts like porn, and unemployment is incredibly high

Once all of that happens and still no action is taken by anyone, then yeah I'll agree most gun nuts only collect firearms to LARP getting to kill minorities.

Mrw Scanning the Archives