441–450 of 534 posts
America is really now two Americas. The divide between traditional freedoms and neo-authoritarianism is getting wider. But America is so large that even the minority (just) that believes in freedom is still 167 million people. Even if only a small percentage of that number, from either side of the divide, believes in violent activism, things are going to get worse before they get better.
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I'm in Dallas as well, and I hear gun shots daily. New Years/4th July absolutely sound like a war zone. I found a slug next to my trash can after a 4th celebration a couple of years ago. Not a shell, the actual slug. I keep it on my desk as a reminder. My fur babies are not allowed outside on those nights.
curious to know where you are in Dallas if you don't mind. I'm in Oak Cliff in the Winnetka Heights neighborhood. This past New Years and July 4th were especially bad, people were double parked on I30 on the bridge to downtown, and the gunfire and fireworks were nonstop. DPD has basically given up, there's going to be a tragedy on day and everyone is going to be like "how could have this have happened!?".
Everyone that shoots their gun like that have come to the conclusion they vastly outnumber the police and know they are very unlikely to have anything happen. The cops are just holding their breath that nobody else recognizes this too
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Dude my car was literally jacked up and had the catalytic convertor chopped off in a parking with flock cameras at a hotel before, def never got caught, and according to the hotel security footage they parked right next to my car, got out and did everything real fast. Plus most people using cars to commit heinous crimes are usually stolen and ditched right after anyways, people who use their own car to commit crimes…
yeah surveillance doesn't mean secure. A few weeks ago there was a solid 10-15 second run of automatic weapons fire on my street in an intersection. I do a lot of shooting and i could tell from the concussion it couldn't have been more than a couple hundred feet from my bedroom window. My neighbors turned in all their camera footage with recordings of two cars and the gunfire to a detective. When i asked them what ha…
Must be pretty quiet all year 'round then.
Someone in the thread linked a teardown showing these use a ~$4 OV5647 Arducam sensor on what's essentially a Raspberry Pi. The real vandalism isn't the people with hammers — it's charging municipalities six figures for a trail camera with a cellular modem and a pitch deck.
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Not sure if you are aware but we rarely directly get to vote on these things. You vote for a representative and hope they vote in a way that serves your interests. But now, we have omnibus bills. And it's 50/50 loaded with things we want and things we don't. The same bill that funds Pre-K will also have a section to fund a kitten shredding machine. But if you vote against it all voters will hear is how you don't want…
I do not live in the USA, but my understanding of those omnibus bills is that they are government blackmail of its people. I remember being horrified the first time I heard this was legal in the USA. How can the US citizens accept such a brutal denying of good governance is beyond me.
To make matters worse, labor unions are equally politically inactive, and most often their only political moves are endorsing candidates. When they do voice support for or opposition against bills, those bills are often stuff related to their industry, and seldom do they actually oppose an over reaching government by threatening general strikes etc.
The press here is also very right leaning. All the big media are owned by capitalist conglomerates and as such most people never hear real challenges to the capitalist power structure. As long as the government class acts favorable to the capitalist interest, then the press has aligning interest, and is thus heavily incentivized to never challenge the government to much.
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America is converting into a radical authoritarian state, yes, but they're not a "fringe". They are, by a small margin, the dominant faction in the US. Popular vote counts prove it.
Unfortunately this country has literacy and education problems, and many voters were plainly ignorant of what they were voting for.
They knew what they were voting for. The cruelty (and the authoritarianism) is the point.
1. https://theday.com/photo-single/1006536/?mode=team
2. https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/people-take-pi...
3. https://www.wusf.org/courts-law/2025-12-22/attorneys-urge-ju...
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FWIW the "rule of law" is a reference to the idea that the law should be applied equally to everyone regardless of their position in society, and has nothing to do with the crime rate. https://www.uscourts.gov/educational-resources/educational-a...
No. Catching murderers (for example) is a basic function of the justice system. Of course the US justice system does have many flaws and in some ways much worse lately, but compare with Somalia or Haiti and you'll see that there's quite a long way down. It could get much worse.
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That’s the separation of powers at work, which is desirable. Congress has to (and can ) do it. Obama, unlike Trump, would sometimes back down when he met the edges of executive authority. That’s how it should be. I wanted Gitmo closed, but I don’t want it closed in a way that further expands the executive branch by once again nibbling at the edges of another branch’s authority.
Plenty of countries that are well-run democracies don’t have separation of powers between the legislature and the executive — the UK is one of many examples. Separation between the executive and the judiciary is important, but separation from the legislature doesn’t really seem to be. Even among countries that do have such a separation, the US is unique in making it so difficult for the legislature to pass anything,…
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What confuses me is that no revolution is required. All we had to do to avoid this was to vote. Voting would still (probably) work.
Your voting system is shit. It results in a two party state. If one party fails to present a coherent offering and the other one is infiltrated by nut jobs then the system breaks down. After all, if it was such a good system, why didn’t you impose it on Germany and Japan when you won WW2? (This comment is politically neutral; who the incoherents and the nut jobs are are left to the reader’s discretion)