Comment by jorblumesea
1 day ago
You mean, what's been happening to the USA? this isn't a new trend. Militarization of police, open attacks on democracy, unilateral foreign policy moves.
the country jumped the shark post 9/11 and has been on a slow rot since then.
Indeed. Bin Laden succeeded beyond his wildest dreams. He kickstarted our self-destruction.
I think the shoe lace bomber did more than bin laden - decades of ritual humiliation at airports was normalised.
The TSA wouldn't exist with bin Laden. The TSA still exists, but the effects of the shoe bomber are now done, in the sense that shoes aren't required to come off as of last year.
No, this is cope, Trump is deeply different.
Trump is different because he is flailing to deflect from the fact he is deeply legally compromised. But he is reaching into a toolbox of things that have already been made available.
yeah there is close to little relation between the current administration and pre-Trump GOP. That entire party is now compromised. Beforehand you could always assume they'd be locked out by legal, business, or party pressure but that hasn't been seemingly much of a thing since Trump (as seen most recently in the illegal tariffs the administration continues to try to apply globally).
The framework for collecting the data to feed to the AI, exposed by Snowden, was designed and implemented in the wake of 9/11 by Bush when Trump was still busy banging teenagers with Epstein and not even thinking about politics.
Then Obama re-authorized and expanded it. Trump and Biden haven’t even moved the needle, really.
Now they’ve put up tens of thousands of permanently installed facial recognition cameras (not Flock ALPR, those point the other direction to get number plates) all over SoCal and southern Nevada (that I’ve directly observed; presumably it is happening in many other cities as well), and TSA and CBP are collecting as many ID-verified sets of facial geometry as they possibly can, whenever they can. ICE is of course using it nonstop, as well as feeding additional geometry into it. They’re flying drones 30 feet above sidewalks in downtown LA to mass collect faces.
The DoD can’t wait to deploy SOTA AI against Americans en masse.
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"Recently turned American citizens" have every bit as much right to free speech, as guaranteed by the 1st amendment, as any other American citizen does. That's the whole point of the constitution. To pretend otherwise betrays the core values of our democracy.
Yeah well my family's been here for hundreds of years and fuck him. They're more American than that piece of shit will ever be.
> They're more American
Do you mean your family, or Congresswoman Omar?
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That's congresswoman "recently turned American citizen" to you sir. BTW she became a citizen 26 years ago. My favorite part of Ilhan Omar being an outspoken congresswoman who keeps getting reelected is how it drives islamophobes crazy.
Complaining about the head of the government publicly so important that its included in the first amendment instead of one of those other ones.
Selective memory as usual, outright dishonest at that. Let’s remember MTG heckling Biden. The when and who started heckling the sotu is well known.
Let’s rush to destroy all norms entirely, since the other side started it it’s totally justified and will have no negative consequences whatsoever.
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I think it was “you lie” under Obama. But my history knowledge awful. I wouldn’t be surprised if there was a duel at a pre civil war sotu.
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My brother in Christ we shoot our Presidents for sport in this country. There's nothing more American than heckling the government and God bless any immigrant who doesn't put up with its bullshit.
The irony inherent in this post is stunning in its purity. Weapons grade. I should be wearing goggles just to view this post. It's off the charts.