“Though it’s also possible that public schools will close and only the wealthy kids will be well-educated… can we not, please?”

Trump and Republicans would like nothing more than to turn this country into another Russia where your kids have to pay through the nose go abroad to get a decent education.

Brave New World? No, the rulers aren’t that benevolent.

1984? Still no, they aren’t that competent.

We are heading for fareinheit 451.

I believe everything you have said here. I haven’t looked it up recently but it’s certainly plausible. I don’t think ozempic is a miracle drug, just one drug that will be widely prescribed like statins and blood pressure drugs have been.

Certainly it would be better to get the benefits of ozempic from diet if we could. We should pursue those other avenues I mentioned earlier. I see people struggling with access to Ozempic and other glp1 meds every day and speak to on average half a dozen of them, and the denials and roadblocks out healthcare system throws up has worn on me.

“Again, I just want to again reiterate: Literally everything Ozempic does positively, from dementia to cravings to weight-loss, can be achieved by eating a healthy diet. Period. Full stop.”

I’m not ignoring you. It’s just not relevant. People could eat better, but nobody does. I see the people around me all my life everyone is dieting and resolving to change their behavior and buying healthier food and going to weight watchers and having bariatric surgery and they are NOT losing weight and they are getting diabetes and suffering chronic pain and many of them are becoming disabled.

If anyone could do it, it wouldn’t be a society wide issue. 60-70% of the people in my city are overweight and the percentage goes up over time. Sure, technically, anyone could change their diet, but they won’t.

Maybe we need to change our transportation infrastructure so biking is easier and walking more reasonable. Maybe we need to change our food regulation so our groceries and restaurant food is less processed. Maybe we need to change our taxation structure to encourage the production and consumption of healthy foods. Maybe we need to do all that, but people know what healthy diets consist of and they DO NOT eat that way. Sugar and fat and cheese and meat and deep fried deep fry are delicious and people will eat delicious food far in excess of their needs and telling people to eat their vegetables is tone deaf, counter - productive, and ultimately, cruel.

Nobody around me is suffering from malnutrition. Meat is very nutritious. That is why our bodies crave it. Bread is fortified with micronutrients. Yes, eating more leafy greens would benefit basically everyone where I live. But Lectures are worse than useless, when obesity is killing and maiming people every day.

Factually correct and wrong in every way that matters.

Have you struggled with oveeating? Food is as addictive as nicotine but you have to have it every day, just not too much.

That’s not realistic. Not for the majority. It’s just not.

Opening fire on sight was never my suggestion.

If ICE comes for you or someone you would fight to protect, I think you should consider it. Trump said he wants Bukele to build five more prisons. He signed and order and bid a contract to expand Guantanamo to 30k beds. No one is coming back from Cuba or El Salvador until Trump is out of office and even if he doesn’t succeed in his third term plans there are no guarantees any one person would survive until then. Or that the next administration will do anything for the prisoners.

I don’t want anyone to be shot, but our lives on on the line.

I don’t think anyone is coming out of El Salvador. And I think if I did there is an excellent chance if I did survive it, I will wish I had been killed instead. I don’t think they have women’s prisons down there and if they did I would 100% be sent to the men’s. I used to learn about the Holocaust and wonder “why didn’t the Jews fight back?” And the truth is that some of them did, but most did not they didn’t have access to guns and they just hoped they would get through it.

When school kids are learning about the American Holocaust I don’t want to be one of the victims that kids wonder “why didn’t the trans Americans fight back?”

ICE needs to be resisted at every level. By Congress, by the states, by cities, and by individuals. I only have discretion over myself. I don’t want to shoot anybody, but I don’t want to die in a mass grave in Cuba or El Salvador either.

Will it work? Probably not. Am I talking tough on the internet? I hope I never find out the answer to that. But I know that if Americans decide to stop ICE as a group we could, even if Congress and the courts and so on are compromised.

The important part is to not be the only person with the gun around. Personal defence won’t do much but community defense might.

But seriously. Nobody is coming back from El Salvador. If ICE comes for you you might as well take one with you.

Robert Evans had an episode of Behind the Bastards about the little Nazis. The middle class shopkeepers and middle managers that weren’t top level but were in the party.

Most of them never admitted it was a mistake to support Hitler.

It’s not actually that powerful. Private prisons are all at the state level, and only some states.

They are opportunistic, not monopolistic, and the political pushback reversed the trend toward privatisation in most of the country.

Private prisons are a stain on our national character, they need to be shut down. but we have bigger shit to worry about right now.

You can imagine being freed from a concentration camp but can’t imagine successful community defense.

Cops don’t want to die in a hail of bullets either. There are more of us than them.

We are going to find out if we prefer the consequences of revolt or the consequences of not revolting more.

Canada might crack the military into the faithful to the constitution vrs the loyal to maga.

Panama or Greenland I figure they would try to minimize loss of life but they would just do it. Blowing up your career for a symbolic gesture or risking civil war in a mass revolt wouldn’t be worth it.

(Some might give up their careers, the ones with high integrity, maybe a lot of command. But they would be replaced with loyalists)

Higher in his favor than the general population? Probably. More than 50%? I doubt it.

But he is purging the leadership. If he purges it enough he will erode the effectiveness of the whole force. Which might be for the best when he invaded Greenland, Panama, and Canada.

This keeps me up at night.

You think they are going after Maga? Most of them aren’t even going after pedofiles!

“less oversight than police.” A bar so low you need a shovel to get under it.

Of course. A leftist protest will never have support from the owner class.

The tea party protests were certainly astroturfed, funded by the coke Brothers etc. but they were also real. They were composed of real people with real grievances.

I don’t think they would admit their actual motivations even to themselves, but it wasn’t a fake movement in the sense that the crowds were fictional. Thousands and tens of thousands of people were showing up and calling reps and voting in primaries.

I agree that it is absolutely inadequate.

Ah yes, no true scottsman would protest for the billionaires!