HeavenlyPossumAug 27, 2025

US Democrats are so enamored with the idea that Trump is “distracting” because a fundamental pillar of US liberalism is that nothing real can ever happen. It’s just not allowed. So when real things do happen, like a fascist takeover and military occupation of the US capital, they can only conceive of it in terms of messaging, of signs and symbols.

The real world ended in 1992, after the Soviet Union collapsed and Bill Clinton became President and neoliberalism settled in as The End of History.

The first real thing that will ever happen to many of these people will be their own deaths.

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/dem-strategists-urged-party-trump-military-takeover-1235415635/

Dems’ Messaging Nerds Urged Party Not to Talk About Trump’s Military Takeover

Democrats’ favorite research firm told Democrats to avoid discussing Trump’s “rising authoritarianism” and focus on tariffs instead.

Rolling Stone
Show threadJason von Nieda 🐀Aug 27, 2025
@HeavenlyPossum @thomasjwebb What exactly do you think people should be doing that they aren’t? I see so many takes like this and they never say anything useful. Do you mean violence? Is there something besides voting, protesting, preparing, protecting, suing, supporting allies, etc. that I am failing to do as a US democrat that can make a difference?
Show threadSouprMattAug 27, 2025

@vonnieda @HeavenlyPossum @thomasjwebb I hope the responses to this show you the types of clowns you will encounter on Kolektiva. I’m not sure if it’s a Russian troll farm, the biggest collection of idiots this side of a Trump rally, or a combination of both.

They tell people not to vote… then when that leads to fascists taking power, they say violence is the only solution. Self-fulfilling prophecy from keyboard warriors that will never take up arms in a rebellion of any kind. An absolute clown show, and not the funny kind of clowns.

Show threadThommyAug 27, 2025
@mls14 @vonnieda @HeavenlyPossum “violence is the only solution” said no one in this thread. The op is criticizing the “voting is the only solution” contingent.
Show threadSouprMattAug 27, 2025
@thomasjwebb @vonnieda @HeavenlyPossum “buy guns” was the post. You’re ascribing imagined nuance where none exists.
Show threadThommyAug 27, 2025
@mls14 @vonnieda @HeavenlyPossum no, this was the post https://kolektiva.social/@HeavenlyPossum/115099971946314206
HeavenlyPossum (@[email protected])

US Democrats are so enamored with the idea that Trump is “distracting” because a fundamental pillar of US liberalism is that nothing real can ever happen. It’s just not allowed. So when real things do happen, like a fascist takeover and military occupation of the US capital, they can only conceive of it in terms of messaging, of signs and symbols. The real world ended in 1992, after the Soviet Union collapsed and Bill Clinton became President and neoliberalism settled in as The End of History. The first real thing that will ever happen to many of these people will be their own deaths. https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/dem-strategists-urged-party-trump-military-takeover-1235415635/

kolektiva.social
Show threadSouprMattAug 27, 2025
@thomasjwebb @vonnieda @HeavenlyPossum Scroll the thread. You will see the post I’m talking about. It’s from the OP, it’s only two words, and a response to somebody asking what the OP’s solution to this problem is. Don’t gaslight when people can literally read the thread and see that you’re lying.
Show threadHeavenlyPossumAug 27, 2025

@vonnieda @thomasjwebb @mls14

I didn’t say that buying guns was a solution to the fascist takeover of the US. That’s a problem that’s wildly outside the scope of individual action to solve. Someone asked me what they should do and I answered, wisely and correctly, that they should buy guns.

Maybe you should try reading what I actually wrote before misportraying my words and accusing other people of gaslighting.

Show threadSouprMattAug 27, 2025

@HeavenlyPossum @vonnieda @thomasjwebb @mls14 Buying guns is extremely unwise. The risk of death by gun violence increases massively when somebody in your household owns one.

I oppose anybody who tells others to buy guns.

https://www.americanprogress.org/article/debunking-the-guns-make-us-safer-myth/

Debunking the ‘Guns Make Us Safer’ Myth

Despite arguments from the gun lobby and its allies, guns used for self-defense are not common, beneficial for society, or efficient in deterring mass shootings or criminal victimization.

Center for American Progress
Show threadHeavenlyPossumAug 27, 2025

@vonnieda @thomasjwebb @mls14

The risk of death by gun violence when fascists take over your country is pretty high too, whether you have a gun or not.

Show threadThommyAug 27, 2025

@HeavenlyPossum @vonnieda @mls14 guns aren't for everyone. This article is addressing different points than were made here. Key things to consider:

A) arithmetic fallacy
B) the dynamic world

Throwing all guns, people and deaths into a bucket and saying things about the bucket gives us important info but can't speak to your situation. Self-harm is contingent on your mental state. Safety is contingent on your measures such as safes and regular training.

Show threadSouprMattAug 27, 2025

@thomasjwebb @HeavenlyPossum @vonnieda Having a gun in your home substantially increases your risk of death from a gun. People with guns are at higher risk of being harmed by a gun than those without guns.

That’s why I know those pushing for people to “buy guns” do not care about others’ well-being.

It’s a smart-ass response from people that gave up on the idea of self-government and think everybody else should too. Sorry, but the adults in the room are CURRENTLY working on ways to solve this without violence. And the Kolektiva Keyboard Klowns (KKK for short?) are cowering and clowning telling others to buy guns while they sit back and hope to pleasure themselves watching the ensuing violence.

Show threadThommyAug 27, 2025
@mls14 @HeavenlyPossum @vonnieda none of your responses indicate that you've read anything anyone here has actually written but instead are just mad at some guy you made up in your head.
Show threadSouprMattAug 27, 2025

@thomasjwebb @HeavenlyPossum @vonnieda I really do wish that “buy guns” in response to “what should Democrats do?” was made up in my head. I really do. But there are actual people in the world typing that nonsense into their computer and posting it for everybody to read. And others are defending it.

This is the crappy world I live in; believe me, the imaginary world in my head doesn’t have anything like this in it.

Show threadThommy
@HeavenlyPossum @vonnieda @mls14 I really wished that all you did was honestly register your distaste about mere mention of self-defense instead of making up a story - wholly from your head - that this constitutes “giving up” on any other means of resistance, a claim you repeatedly made and never honestly tried to defend. Reasonable people can have honest disagreements about the specifics of resistance. Unfortunately you’re not being honest.
Aug 27, 2025 at 8:15pmMetatext
Show threadSouprMattAug 27, 2025

@thomasjwebb @HeavenlyPossum @vonnieda Heavenly Possum is not being honest. They don’t live in the US. But they are telling Americans to buy more guns and shoot each other.

This is not acceptable behavior, period. Nobody should be defending this person, who is probably on Putin’s payroll and posting from somewhere in Russia.

Show threadHeavenlyPossumAug 27, 2025

@thomasjwebb @vonnieda @mls14

I didn’t tell anyone to shoot anyone. I suggested my interlocutor buy guns and learn how to safely handle and discharge them.

Show threadThommyAug 27, 2025

@HeavenlyPossum @vonnieda @mls14 "But they are telling Americans to buy more guns and shoot each other."
"this person, who is probably on Putin’s payroll"

Once again this person is just absolutely making shit up. All he can do is reply to points that were never even made, not even implied in the thread. Again, making up someone in his head and getting mad at them. Maybe the fact that no one's swooping down to safe us upsets him so much that he distracts himself from the horror by lashing out.

Show threadThommyAug 27, 2025
@HeavenlyPossum @vonnieda @mls14 a common thing I see though is people conflating self-defense and violent escalation. Like one can lead to another. That's what I don't like about open carry and most of the US's gun culture. But it's a whole other thing to pretend that someone who called for one thing called for the other thing. But these people who believe that Dems will swoop in can't fathom how much self-defense (armed or not) is an unavoidable part of even non-violent resistance.
Show threadViolet MadderAug 28, 2025

@thomasjwebb @HeavenlyPossum @vonnieda @mls14

You're recognizing some very insidious and significant patterns here-- the unruly leftist strawman is a stereotyped scapegoat they've villainized very thoroughly, it's what they expect and what they tend to see and hear no matter WHAT we actually do or say.

Anytime we point out corruption in electoralism for instance, they tend to jump straight to "how dare you (tell people to) not vote!" even if we never actually said that or even explicitly noted otherwise.

Another example, when we point out how nasty the fascism is they react as if we just gave a treatise promoting defeatism-- even if we're advocating enthusiastic struggle, there's this bizarrely persistent assumption we want everyone to give up, because that's the story they've been sold about us.

So a lot of these debates are marked very distinctly by moments of them shouting "aha I knew it, you XX and YY!" and us saying "uhhhh nobody here said that" and them carrying on regardless as if our posts are going through some kind of funhouse filter.

Show threadSouprMattAug 27, 2025

@thomasjwebb @HeavenlyPossum @vonnieda You also joined in on the call for violence…

https://mastodon.social/@thomasjwebb/115101825576138003

Not enough to have the guns. You want people trained up and ready to shoot. Shoot who? You and your marsupial friend really seem to like violence.

Show threadThommyAug 27, 2025

@mls14 @HeavenlyPossum @vonnieda

"shoot who?"

armed agents of the state who broke into your home to murder you. Clearly, I'm against violence. I just don't kid myself into thinking that my nonviolence will compel my enemies to adopt nonviolence.

Show threadSouprMattAug 27, 2025

@thomasjwebb @HeavenlyPossum @vonnieda LOL you think armed agents of the state are gonna just walk in and you will be able to defend yourself?

If you’re the target of a fascist dictator, a bomb is gonna wipe your neighborhood from the map while you’re sleeping. They won’t give you a chance to fight back. Wake up.

Show threadThommyAug 27, 2025
@mls14 @HeavenlyPossum @vonnieda have you been paying attention to the news at all? Yes, the government has already dropped bombs on entire neighborhoods before (e.g., MOVE bombing), but a much, much more common occurrence is breaking into homes and cars and kidnapping people. This is actively happening. Try paying attention to current events.
Show threadSouprMattAug 27, 2025
@thomasjwebb @HeavenlyPossum @vonnieda So your plan is to start shooting at groups of armed ICE agents wearing body armor. Let me know how that works out for you. I’ll check the newspaper just in case you find yourself unable to write back about your experience.
Show threadThommyAug 27, 2025

@mls14 @HeavenlyPossum @vonnieda "So your plan is to start shooting at groups of armed ICE agents"

Either you are making up shit *yet again* about calls for preemptive violence after being repeatedly corrected. Or you think that being unarmed when a group of ICE agents are in your home to kill you is a good thing.

Show threadHeavenlyPossumAug 28, 2025

@mls14 @thomasjwebb @vonnieda

There’s a certain kind of liberal for whom the most exciting thing they can do is tell people to calm down and avoid overreacting when fascists have seized power in their country.

The real problem for them is always going to be the violation of decorum contained in a suggestion to do something, anything at all in response to literal fascism. You don’t want to get hysterical, after all, by doing something.

Show threadSouprMattAug 28, 2025

@HeavenlyPossum @thomasjwebb @vonnieda Advocating for people to “buy guns” goes WAY beyond a “violation of decorum.”

You are trying to foment violence in a country you don’t even live in. This cannot be viewed as anything less than malice.

You used to live in DC. Do you want armed warfare in the streets where you lived? For those of us still living here, we do NOT want a war on our streets. So shove off on this “buy guns” nonsense… if you really DO care about the lives of people living here.

Show threadHeavenlyPossumAug 28, 2025

@thomasjwebb @mls14 @vonnieda

Comrade, your government is operating concentration camps. It has militarily occupied multiple cities. It is disappearing people off the streets and smuggling them to perpetual torture prisons abroad. You are decidedly past the “fomenting” stage. I assure you that my toot suggesting you buy guns is not the source of the problems facing you.

Show threadSouprMattAug 28, 2025
@HeavenlyPossum @thomasjwebb @vonnieda I’m not your comrade. And what is this “your country” BS? You said DC is your hometown, right? Have you renounced your citizenship or something?
Show threadHeavenlyPossumAug 28, 2025

@vonnieda @mls14 @thomasjwebb

Comrade, what advice would you give to German liberals in 1934 if you could go back and warn them?

Show threadViolet MadderAug 28, 2025

@HeavenlyPossum @mls14 @thomasjwebb @vonnieda

All we have to do is behave and BE GOOD and we'll BE SAFE.

Just be good. That's the entire plan, all the logic and strategy. Whenever anybody suggests ANYTHING ELSE, all they hear is somebody telling them to not be good. Which can't be anything but bad. Asking for trouble.

No context, no nuance, no bigger picture or chains of cause & effect any longer than 2 steps: just keep your head down and be good.

Show threadViolet MadderAug 28, 2025

@mls14 @thomasjwebb @HeavenlyPossum @vonnieda

And your plan is to make damn sure everyone who isn't fascist is disarmed, while.... um... frantically filling in some checkboxes on pieces of paper every couple of years, just kinda praying you don't happen to get kidnapped or bombed, and...?

Oh, let me guess! Turning in your neighbors that you suspect might be, oh, say, posting dissident stuff from kolektiva, so the gestapo hits them instead of you.

Show threadHeavenlyPossumAug 28, 2025

@thomasjwebb @violetmadder @vonnieda @mls14

There’s a certain kind of liberal who would have turned in Anne Frank because she was breaking the law.

Show threadHeavenlyPossumAug 28, 2025

@vonnieda @mls14 @thomasjwebb

Wow it sounds like you have already lost, utterly and totally, then.

Show threadViolet MadderAug 28, 2025

@mls14 @thomasjwebb @HeavenlyPossum @vonnieda

Wow.

Note what just happened here!

This is where the liberal mind pivots and makes a MASSIVE LEAP directly from a realm where we have absolutely NO REASON or justification to defend ourselves, at all, whatsoever....

Straight to, we have absolutely NO CHANCE to defend ourselves effectively, at all, whatsoever, The enemy is overwhelmingly powerful and we are just helplessly fucking doomed.

Do not pass GO, do not even pause to contemplate in any serious or realistic way what communities have ever done historically when push comes to actual shove in the messy process of growing corruption and collapsing systems, don't stop to think about what you'll really do if jackbooted thugs come to YOUR neighborhood as is actually currently truly happening all around us. Just straight whiplash from don't-disrupt-brunch and only-cops-should-have-guns, to if-the-cops-go-bad-oh-well-kiss-your-ass-goodbye.

It's voting, or rivers of blood. Preserve the system, or roll over and die. Only two modes.

Show threadSouprMattAug 28, 2025

@violetmadder @thomasjwebb @HeavenlyPossum @vonnieda You seem to be suggesting the insurrectionist theory.

https://www.bradyunited.org/resources/research/origin-of-an-insurrection

It’s the basis for the right-wing militia movement in America.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_militia_movement#Opposition_to_the_government

I believe in working together through community and democracy to create a society free of violence.

Origin of an Insurrection

Everything you need to know to fight America's gun violence epidemic: legislation, legal cases, reports, statistics and personal stories can be found here.

Brady United
Show threadViolet MadderAug 28, 2025

@mls14 @thomasjwebb @HeavenlyPossum @vonnieda

All I'm fucking suggesting is that we have more than 2 wildly reductive and cartoonishly polarized options.

There's an ocean of possibilities-- and messy, real-world examples over the centuries-- far beyond the binary you seem to be stuck in.

Direct action, mutual aid, labor organizing, community defense, parallel power, all kinds of things influence the landscape of change-- but Americans are trained to limit their thinking to just ONE corner of power and strategy: vote harder and if that doesn't work well I guess we just die it doesn't bear thinking about lalalalala vote blue vote blue vote blue eeeeeeek.

Show threadSouprMattAug 28, 2025

@violetmadder @thomasjwebb @HeavenlyPossum @vonnieda My initial response to this thread was the OP replying to a question about proposed solutions. His answer? “Buy guns”

I’m not the one who came out with “this is the only solution” - it was the OP who did that. Now I’m being accused of saying voting is the only thing people can do in society.

I know I never said that, but I do know that “buy guns” is a literal post in response to a detailed and reasonable question in this thread. And THAT is what I have a problem with.

I agree that we need to work together and use multiple vectors. But violence should always be the last resort.

Show threadViolet MadderAug 28, 2025

@mls14 @thomasjwebb @HeavenlyPossum @vonnieda

Again, the thread started with a more detailed post and article. HP is tired and grouchy, so probably feeling at least somewhat trollish when he said just, "buy guns", but any look at his actual profile (packed with EXTENSIVE, thorough, and even academic writings on all this) would tell you there's a whole lot more to this and more on his mind.

Show threadHeavenlyPossumAug 29, 2025

@thomasjwebb @violetmadder @mls14 @vonnieda

I never said that buying guns was the only solution.

You could steal them too.

Show threadSouprMattAug 29, 2025
@HeavenlyPossum @thomasjwebb @violetmadder @vonnieda Funny as a toothache
Show threadHeavenlyPossumAug 29, 2025

@mls14 @violetmadder @thomasjwebb @vonnieda

I agree that lobbying people to pre-emptively disarm during a fascist takeover is pathetic rather than funny.