At the beginning of March, Johnson advised his Republican colleagues not to hold town hall meetings, claiming they were giving a "forum" to "professional protesters."
These idiots are going to find out why peaceful protest exists. The alternative is not very friendly to say the least.
Protestors make noise and cause a ruckus to draw attention to any number of social issues they feel need addressed. If they're successful, laws/perceptions change to more closely reflect their ideal.
Professional protestors are those that get paid to do that.
Ergo, politicians are the "paid protestors", and the people you are avoiding are just garden-variety protestors.
If you have to advise all of your colleagues to hide from protesters instead of holding a dialogue with the people you represent... maybe you're the baddies?
Its looking more and more like thats the GOP plan. Incite an uprising, then they declare martial law where they are free from any check on their power by the courts.
Whats going to be the lynchpin is the GOP will have an army willing to put down Americans en masse.
This is one of the reasons why Lincoln was emphatic that the south had to draw first blood. That allowed him to set the war in motion.
The problem this time is that the fascists are in power and they have their hands on the levers. They are drawing first blood through their laws and executive orders.
At some point, liberals will have to fight back. I fear that more people will die before that happens
Or the military command structure fractures and now they have several warring regional or state fractions/civil war, or the military leadership enacts a coup when given illegal orders and either holds executive under military threat or hands control back to the legislature or judicial to hold a special election.
They are unable to see any of these unintended possible consequences of their actions, the same way they are unable to identify irony, or have empathy, or entertain hypotheticals.
There's a conflict of interest between EU and USA that is becoming a real problem.
Preamble:
European States and companies widely use cloud services run by US companies. In the EU data protection is considered a human right, whereas in the US it's a citizen's right.
That means, if an intelligence service in the eu want to look at my data, they need a warrant. If an intelligence service in the US want to look at a US citizen's data, they need a warrant. Ø
But if a US intelligence service want to look at my data, a US company will just have to hand it over. I have no protection, not being a US citizen.
A few legal exercises has been made to deal with this. After all, the amounts earned by Azure, Google Cloud and AWS are noteworthy. Twice the EU court of Law has deemed these exercises wanting, and the problem has been huge enough that Biden and EU Commission head van der Layen made a joint pressemøde conference to annonce that it had been solved - latest in october 2022 by executive order 14086.
End of preamble.
So. The US has this peaceful group of nations across the atlantic that very much just want to pump billions into the US digital economy. As long as the US at least pretends that they respect EU data privacy laws more or less on the level that US citizens are protected. Because building our own similar services is one hell of a pain.
It's a pipeline of free money. And even though we complain at every price hike, we can't seem to move towards the exit.
Project 2025 language on this? It's all an evil plot by scheming europeans in Brussels to nerf US intelligence, and EO14086 is another weak decision by weak biden. It should be cancelled and Brussels should told to piss off.
Billions. Literally billions of dollars every year flowing from companies and taxpayers all over EU towards US Big Tech bank accounts. And the p2025 nutcases want to fuck it up, because setting a tiny privacy footnote on billions of tech dollars make america look weak.
holds executive under military threat or hands control back to the legislature or judicial to hold a special election.
With the actual past insurrection supporters currently in control of the legislature and the judiciary, I wonder if this would be the final thing that triggers action on their part to preserve the country, or would they simply hand the reigns of power back to copycats of the ones that fomented the first insurrection.
One or two skilled people identify a venue (public high school gym? Public park? Local, non-corporate movie theater? A stadium?) and schedule a date and time?
Come up with a draft agenda to discuss at the meeting, publish it somewhere accessible online, and request comments to consider additions/revisions?
Do the same thing for a meeting ruleset to ensure it remains productive and not just an excuse to suck up oxygen by venting/ranting? Use something like a 'talking stick'?
Have petitions ready for signature so attendees can formally record their views and desires upon conclusion of the meeting?
Identify 3 or so topics to rally behind and ask for volunteers to lead or serve on committees to act on them?
I want this stuff to be actionable, not just a "someone should do this!" complaint.
I'm not an organizer... I'm naive on how this kind of thing works...but I'd like to be part of an organized movement to make things trend toward better before it gets worse.
You cant just organise a gathering of many people without permits. If you lack the permits for say, fire safety, your gathering will be broken up by police and you get a fun day in court.
And guess what happens if you apply for permits in your town and you say you want to organise your own town hall because you disagree with the ones in power? Do you think they will get approved?
Exactly. This is why peaceful protest doesn't work.
K, so what's the alternative to an organized town hall look like? Like I said, I'm naive. I've largely been insulated from activism and have allowed myself to go with the flow for too long.
No. No, they are not. America is full of a bunch of pussy, shit talkers. They won't do a damn thing. If they were going to do anything but whine, they would have done it by now.
Dude Americans can't even be fucked to do anything when their kids are smashed to pieces by bullets in their own schools, except of course a "thoughts and prayers" on a social media is about the most of it, the rest go "Oh that's terrible" and go back to eating their dinners.