I've been meaning to ask since seeing you pop up in this thread (welcome back, btw) - if you were writing the events of this shitshow of an administration beat for beat, how quick do you think your editor, agent, or whoever was reading the manuscript would stop and be like "c'mon dude, none of this horseshit is believable and it's barely coherent. Do better"?
Yes, profess your love for terrorism on a public forum. What a great way to have a productive discussion.
Poor choice of words; I know you aren't co-signing it and I get your point. Apologies if it came across like that.
This though, I don't understand why we need to keep making these implications; have I not been critical of the Trump administration within this thread? Do I need to voice an opinion on every single topic in order for the opinions that I do feel need to be shared to be taken seriously? This is what I was getting at with my post on Tuesday a few pages back, I'm not what I would consider well informed on every single action the administration takes, so I don't want to chime in on things that I don't know all of the details on. Yes, I think it's plausible that there's some screwey stuff going on with the deportations, and I haven't seen anything about the blackmail but can totally believe that can happen. But I'm not an immigration and customs expert nor am I a legal analyst and haven't even done a basic level of research on those topics so I'm not going to grab a pitchfork quite yet.
You seem to be taking the right-wing script and running with it. I saw a story that specifically laid out exactly what was happening to citizens in one city and responded to that and only that. You wanting to turn it into a fight because I happen to disagree that arming yourself against specifically what was said in the specific story I was addressing in FARGO for fuck sake, where there is no dealership to torch isn't something I'm gonna play with. It's another hit to the typical right-wing, "Attack everything until we prove they're worse than us."
My editor would tell me to lay off the sauce for a few weeks and try again. And she drank just as much as me most of the time up until I quit altogether.
Bro you're not getting it. They're connected. I don't need a script to tell me that if people all over are starting to act up and target this specific demographic of people, that if I'm in that demographic, I am now at risk, and if I start seeing evidence that this is happening in my local area, like, for example, in Fargo, I should be on alert.
Nah, you know, that's fair, that was a littl below the belt of me, and I apologize for that.
Tangent related to both of these posts, i got a notification the Walmart app is going to require REAL ID (federal standard licence) to participate, which feels like it's gotta be bending the knee to the immigration issue. I've had a driver's license and passport for over 25 years but I've gotta dig up social security card and birth certificate for this shit?
My wortking theory for a while now has been federal workers are going to severely cut back on spending just in case they get laid off, and that'll have trickle-down effects elsewhere in the service industry as people see the decline in spending and start cutting back on their OWN spending, just in case. I'm not at all surprised by what you're seeing - that said, it's probably very bad news for the economy.
Buying a gun because they're afraid people are going to throw things at their car already illustrates too much "crazy" to be afforded that right.
I'm surprised they don't offer a passport ID as an alternative, tbh. Real ID isn't even mandatory to fly for a few more months, and not only has a passport always been flagged as an acceptable alternative, I think we're legally obligated to recognize the passport of any country we have diplomatic relationships with as a valid form of personal ID. The one possible exception might be proof of age for consuming alcohol, which is state and not federal regulated, and states have the option of accepting or rejecting IDs other than ones issued by that state themsevles... but anecdotally if you show up at a bar and give them a passport they're probably not going to give you trouble.
I'll have to go back and check, the system is similar to when you get your learners permit where there's 3 points of ID and they'll accept X Y Z for your one, A B C as type two, etc. And passport is considered one point but you still need either your social security card or birth certificate or both I'm not sure.
I appreciate it.
I've seen a poor kid have his mom's brains spattered all over the passenger seat because a brick flew off of the truck that was in front of them and crashed through the windshield. Some wild shit can happen on the road. Having a gun won't fix that, but what if someone follows you? What if this starts off as an altercation in a parking lot, rather than on the freeway? It's a hedge against the unknown, not a fix for a specific problem. The throwing things is a symptom, it's a sign.
If any of the indivdiduals interviewed had said anything *AT FUCKING ALL* about these connections between cup-throwing idjits in Fargo and the torched dealerships elsewhere, you'd have a point. This is the problem with the fear-rhetoric, it sometimes misses the forest for all those god damned trees standing in the way. Though I'm certain in your mind, I'm the one doing that. So be it.
Carrying a firearm around with you on a regular basis seems borderline crazy to me anyway, but that opens a whole other can of worms. It strikes me as a symptom of fear taking hold of your life, whether rational or irrational. And living in fear leads you to do stupid, reckless, crazy shit, because if you didn't, someone else might! It's gotta be a terrible way to live, and it's certainly not a sign that you're looking at a long-term tenable situation to continue living in.
And your line of reasoning is a sign of paranoia.I appreciate it.
I do understand what you're getting at, and I do understand why people are doing these things; but I can't sign off on them.
The thing that I take issue with is pivoting to blaming the victims in this for not wanting to be victims. These people didn't do anything wrong and I think it's ridiculous to sneer at them for having the gall to want to be properly equipped to defend themselves in case some lunatic decides to try and take things too far and I think it's totally reasonable for them to be scared.
This is a different conversation, but we aren't speaking about the vandals v. the administration, we're looking at the vandals v. the public, right? Because despite the vandals' beef that they're trying to express being with the administration, the people that they're directly harming are the public. And the motivation of the public is to make it through the day and be left alone. If we're abandoning "being the good guy" and looking at this as a zero-sum game, this is still counter-productive, because if you get in the way of that, all you're doing is generating more support for the regime to come and "restore law and order."
I've seen a poor kid have his mom's brains spattered all over the passenger seat because a brick flew off of the truck that was in front of them and crashed through the windshield. Some wild shit can happen on the road. Having a gun won't fix that, but what if someone follows you? What if this starts off as an altercation in a parking lot, rather than on the freeway? It's a hedge against the unknown, not a fix for a specific problem. The throwing things is a symptom, it's a sign.
....why would they need to? Are we assuming they just missed that whole story? You can't spell out all the minutia around any decision you make in a segment on the news that lasts for what, a couple minutes? Idk, if it were me, I'd assume the backdrop of that stuff would go without saying.
That's not what I'm saying at all. I'm saying having a gun tends to make a lot of people feel safer. In many cases I don't think it would do you any good, and I think for most of the people we're talking about, is completely unnecessary and like you say, probably more likely to cause things to escalate. But there are situations that are easy to imagine where it might, so folks carry. It's not an outlandish concept.
