Lesley Carhart Oct 29

Hey, so as a veteran and incident responder I need to warn you to pay attention to something in America.

The human brain is resilient. While you’re watching kids get dragged away from the parents and people being beaten in the streets, you’re accumulating trauma but also being desensitized.

Show threadLesley Carhart Oct 29

This is a natural reaction of your brain to repeatedly seeing horrific things. It will pay less and less attention to those images and have less of a visceral reaction. You can accept horrors.

This is what the fascists want. They want you to accept things continually getting worse and more violent.

Show threadLesley Carhart Oct 29
I know it’s overwhelming right now, but kick in your rational brain and risk measures and then evaluate if things are the same or as good as they were a year ago, ten years ago, etc. Is this something you would have considered normal or noteworthy? Is this what you’d expect from the gov or media?
Show threadJJOct 29
@hacks4pancakes First off, you left Chicago at precisely the right time. Second, people know this isn't ok. The issue seems to be that there are no good options to make this go away. The courts are slow, stepping in physically to protect people leads directly to the Insurrection Act being invoked and further dominoes falling, and while people are doing what they can, masked men are still crashing cars, tossing teargas, and throwing people into unmarked vans. It's insane.
Show threadLesley Carhart Oct 29
@guitarfosec people on Mastodon know. My dad doesn’t know. My colleagues don’t know. The people who organize Chicago events don’t know. We are in a bubble.
Show threadKim ScheinbergOct 29

@hacks4pancakes @guitarfosec
I have been thinking about going to Chicago to protest and wondering, if I get beaten or arrested, will that finally be the wakeup call for some people in my circles

My fear is not of being beaten or arrested. My fear is that even *that* won't be a wakeup call

Show threadBen RamseyOct 29
@kims @hacks4pancakes @guitarfosec My in-laws think we’ve been radicalized. If we went to a protest and were arrested and/or beaten, they would assume we are too far gone and deserved it.
Show threadBen RamseyOct 29

@kims @hacks4pancakes @guitarfosec In reality, we (my wife and I) have probably moved toward the left much less than they’ve moved to the right.

(Though, since we now agree with health care for all and UBI, among other things, we may be farther left than we think.)

Show threadDarwin WoodkaOct 29

@ramsey @kims @hacks4pancakes @guitarfosec

UBI isn't leftist, it just makes sense since it's cheaper than anything else you can do for mental and physical health and well being, keeping people in housing and in school. Instead we spend more on cops, health programs, trying to police schools, food assistance, etc, etc....

Show threadBen RamseyOct 30
@darwinwoodka @kims @hacks4pancakes @guitarfosec I know, but in the US, it’s pretty far “left.” I think we arrived at it because it just seems like the best way to make everyone freer.
Show threadKim ScheinbergOct 30

@ramsey @darwinwoodka @hacks4pancakes @guitarfosec
I did a deep dive on UBI back in 2017. Weirdly, it was the one position that, once upon a time, Ds, Rs, and libertarians all agreed on

Their reasons were *very* different, but there is video on C-Span of Charles Murray (author of the execrable _The Bell Curve_) and Andy Stern (former president of the SEIU) arguing on the *same side* for UBI

And Nixon almost enacted it!

https://thecorrespondent.com/4503/the-bizarre-tale-of-president-nixon-and-his-basic-income-bill/173117835-c34d6145

The bizarre tale of President Nixon and his basic income bill

In 1969 President Richard Nixon was on the verge of implementing a basic income for poor families in America. It promised to be a revolutionary step – had the President not changed his mind at the last minute. This is the incredible and largely forgotten tale of just how close the U.S. came to stamping out poverty altogether.

The Correspondent
Show threadBen Ramsey
@kims @darwinwoodka @hacks4pancakes @guitarfosec If Nixon had signed a bill for UBI, where would we be now, 50 years later? Interesting alternative history speculative fiction prompt.
Oct 30 at 12:23amWeb