Alternatively, these feelings about this post are falling prey to fascist tactics. Freedom of Speech is a concept of the past and they will keep “joking” about it as they clamp down more and more till criticism is silenced out. The whole time, these feelings will have been unwillingly supporting it by dismissing the carefully orchestrated circus show of smoke, rights violations and mirrors as merely being the mirrors, circus and smoke.

Ok, at this point I’ve explained the hell out of my point and can only conclude you are a troll. You’ve made 0 effort to figure out what I am saying, so clearly the strawman you started with is the hill you want to go to die on.

The fact you call this conversation “on par with brainless maga trolls” is more evidence you just intended to rile me up while completely knowing exactly what threat I am talking about as people are being disappeared off of streets and hate crimes are being covered up. Clearly people should wait for the historians to have a perspective on this as the regime increasingly cancels studies on societal problems.

I don’t have the energy for that.

You’ve absolutely built a strawman. You obviously understand the new risks we’re talking about given the subject of the article and the context, but yet you continue to imply this is about traditional gun statistics and not the ever increasing and looming threat of violence from neighbors who support the regime.

You are seemingly purposefully misconstruing my argument and that is annoying.

Clearly the point is a new danger exists, why you keep insisting on the strawman argument against the position that gun stats arent real, something I’ve never indicated, I do not know.

I can only think its in bad faith because you don’t have arguments against the actual opinions I’ve shared.

Did you not at all read my comment?

I knew the stats before you mentioned them, I’m pointing out there are clear differences to society right now that make this data far less relevant.

Your actually implies you’re arguing against an argument I’ve made but you aren’t at all.

That’s nice, but those statistics are from a different time with a different threat profile.

We are long done with pretending we’re living in a reasonable society.

They’re pretty incompetent, but also, it does present significant deterrence to ICE especially if people aren’t charged for legal self defence.

I still think this is mostly about defending yourself from emboldened neighbors though.

A gun does not defend you from a drone. It defends you from other people who are emboldened to commit crimes against you.

The point later in the comment is about what happens if the government fully turns in the citizens. Protecting yourself is midway to that.

You basically can’t let it get that far or you’re just cooked.

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You can see me as braindead, as a troll, as engaging in “double speak”, as being condescending, as being ignorant, and so forth.

Sure can, and thus far you arent beating the charges. Also kinda funny you decided to purposefully twist words there to portray my criticisms of your argument as insults against you. Typical bad faith behaviour. Troll is accurate though, because I don’t believe you even believe what you are arguing.

this conversation has quickly devolved into shit-slinging

You having incoherent responses and this accurately being pointed out doesnt give you a license to pretend that this is errant shit slinging as opposed to you being unable to come up with cogent backing for your stated opinions.

It seems like you are in an incredibly bad headspace - maybe I’m off-base, but I’m not looking down on you by pointing this out and asking you to consider untangling yourself from narratives strung by our media.

The obvious projection here is incredible. I’m supposedly shit slinging while you pretend that not buying your insane opinions with no reasoning to them must mean I am clueless. Most obvious bad faith participation there has ever been.

focusing on the likelihood of a civil war or mass violence perpetrated by MAGA.

You focused on the first rather than the latter because the latter is pretty obviously a likely occurrence. You’ve indicated multiple times in the previous comment you can’t even deny that ICE ramping up isnt disastrous.

There are already plenty of people calling these secret police on their neighbors.

You’re just playing with semantics if you continue to pretend this isnt a real concern.

We are both just as aware of what’s going on as the other one, but I’m attempting to have a cooler head about it.

No. You are attempting to downplay the seriousness of the situation because it makes you feel comfortable or you support it. Not sure which one, but neither is a good faith or objective view.

I live in an area that is overwhelmingly occupied by MAGA voters and I’m not seeing the overflowing hate and violence here as an openly gay person.

The ol “If I don’t see it, it doesnt exist” after the “As a [minority] things are fine”. Your demographic literally is not one of the ones currently on the chopping block yet, but you can clearly see them ramping up for that too with the supreme court rumoured to be looking at what constitutes marriage next. You’re up right after interracial marriage.

More than that, as a white man, who passes social norms, you wouldn’t be seeing this as someone who clearly does not know many if any marginalized people given your responses here.

Further, given that its a very vanishingly small amount of high density areas that are not blue, it likely means you aren’t living where the troubles are happening. Somehow this makes you believe they wont spread.

Trump wouldn’t have been able to run for the highest office in the country and assume office if they did do something concrete.

This isn’t a point that is being debated. Its just something you’ve thrown up as if its at all relevant to the current discussion of whether future violence is likely.

A large portion of these 77 million people are Christians, likely.

The Nazis also ran with a tuned version of Christianity. This is literally not a point of worth in any respect. The fact they have choosen a religion to band around politically is actually a huge red flag.

I’m attempting to point out here are over 250 million people who are not radicalized.

By lying through omission, which I pointed out, and which you still have not addressed in any capacity whatsoever.

Being propagandized is not exactly the same thing as being hateful.

Propaganda is the mechanism, hate is the outcome. You arent making a point here.

Christians are indeed manipulated into hate, but would quickly be shown the light if people assuaged their fears.

No, no they would not. The democratic party tried to do that. They went with racism instead.

That is, unless you mean somehow minorities need to prove to the hateful that they deserve life, which would be an absurd take.

Most Democrats are not as squeaky clean as we are led to believe. Our last president was a Zionist who committed a genocide, even Kamala wrestled with that reality - as detailed in her book.

Literally no one is arguing that they are squeaky clean. Not a single person doesnt advocate for them as the significantly less evil of 2 evils.

This is reality.

This point right here to me is the think that has really stuck out. This makes me think you are a closeted conservative. That you are currently pretending to have liberal/leftist viewpoints, because not a single democrat I have ever talked to has ever believed this, and no one would even believe someone would honestly feel the need to make such an argument given that no one believes it.

Everybody would benefit from calming down.

This is the same ol rhetoric of “meet in the middle” where non maga takes one step forward, and maga takes 2 steps back, and then says “meet in the middle” again.

People have mostly wizened up to this nonsense. There is no “calm” middle ground between fascism and not fascism.

but rather just calm down and stop seeing violence as inevitable.

“Hey people just ignore reality because if you point out the obvious heading, that means you support it!” - Your logic right now.

Given the point above with me being convinced you aren’t honest with your views, Im sure youll have some long reply, but I doubt its in good faith, and I don’t think anyone is reading down this far, so it probably won’t be worth spending this much time on responding to.

I would say I hope you become a better person, but anyone willing to be this deceitful isnt the type of person who even internally believes that they are doing what is right.

And yet he hasn’t been able to

Its only been ramping up, not down.

They have to resort to playing old protest footage and making up easily disprovable lies to rile people up - does that not read as desperate to you?

No. That reads as a disinformation campaign, and one that is working as they have ICE members ready and willing, currently committing heinous acts against the people.,

Despite the world population exploding, there has historically been much worse happening - and at much greater scales.

This arugment couldn’t be more brain dead

“There are worse things than modern genocides, so its not that bad”.

I’m finding it hard to think you arent a troll with logic like that.

Which unfortunately isn’t an entirely new occurrence if you look it up.

Is every single bit of logic you have false equivalences in bad faith? That seems like it might be it.

Under this administration, it’s certainly much more well-funded, it’s much more chaotic, it’s much more performative in the way it’s being done, and people being denied due process and getting shipped away to death camps and countries they’ve never been to is obviously extremely concerning and is not a positive trajectory (and is not performative, it’s very real). It’s not an indicator that there is a civil war on the horizon though.

This is tremendously brain dead logic once again, and it starts with you inserting a civil war angle to try to bait this discussion into going a specific way so we can’t discuss the details of whats happening through their logical stages.

When this ramps up further, and people need to defend themselves, it doesn’t matter what you call it.

Everybody was free to do something tangible about that, including the people who held power after that event.

This does not change anything. This is just you pointing out a separate failure.

More than that, they didn’t do nothing, as otherwise there wouldnt be any people to pardon.

No, you are hearing the most vocal and insane examples through social media and other forms of media.

Polls repeatedly show that his supporters support him basically no matter what. You’re just trying to downplay this, when in reality double digit percentages more republicans own guns than democrats, and their rhetoric for years has been to find a purpose for them.

People are densely packed in with each other

Its almost like there is a reason that cities are blue, and anywhere that isn’t a city is red.

Surely though this means everyone loves thy neighbor according to you.

They are being manipulated into believing this is a matter of survival.

How are you in one breath saying its no big deal and they don’t think like this, then in the other breath, in the same god damn comment, saying that they think its a matter of survival?

that the other side is demonic, woke, and ineffectual. Hate doesn’t factor into the equation for most of these people.

This is crazy double speak. You are literally stating here that they think the other side is demonic, that they hate them for being woke (acknowledging the hardships of marginalized people), and ineffectual (similarly to how in Nazi germany jews were portrayed as weak, yet powerful and coniving), and somehow you pretend its not about hate.

Craaaaaazy set of clearly contradicting sentences.

The world is a different place outside of social media and partisan media.

The difference you are portraying is one where you stick your head in the sand and ignore what is actually happening in order to believe that everything is fine and nothing ever happens.

Ground yourself, considering connecting with your community by attending an event or group or volunteering your time, and understand that things are not always exactly how they are presented by those that literally thrive on our attention.

Your attempts at condescension while being completely ignorant are astounding.

77 million people voted for Trump. There are over 340 million people in the US.

Less people voted for the only alternative, and of those polled, for the eligible non-voters (Which you know is the number that matters and is exactly why you used total population to be misleading), surveys have said that trump would have still won if they voted.

Proclaiming Matthew 25 would diffuse a large part of what is going on - that’s how much of a house of cards this all is.

Quoting the religious text of the regime to me after all you’ve just said is the icing on this shit cake.

There are millions of people in the US - if there was really an appetite for mass violence in the populace, it would’ve already revealed itself.

This is insane logic to me when the president is clearly gearing up to do violence against the people, and the violent rhetoric is at an all time high.

“it hasn’t happened yet, so it wont happen despite all the signs saying it will” is such a bad take its unimaginably bad.

Accept that we are relatively peaceful in modern times and rethink your beliefs.

There are literally multiple genocides happening right now. There are literally people being disappeared off the streets with no trials, identification and we don’t know where they are ending up.

This is just an insane take.

They fucking stormed the capital!

Would even the people deepest in the MAGA movement want their children to exist in a world where they aren’t safe due to political violence and civil war?

Yes??? Are you not hearing these people. Holy fuck.

This is a new level of sticking ones head in the sand.

Could they reasonably protect them in such a reality?

No, but they value hate above incredible personal sacrifice, hence their voting choices.

I’m not sure you can even vocalize what you’re trying to say here.

The facts are just not in your favour.

https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/07/24/key-facts-about-americans-and-guns/

Key excerpt:

45% of Republicans and GOP-leaning independents say they personally own a gun, compared with 20% of Democrats and Democratic leaners.

You’ll find that all available information says similar.

Republicans have a much higher percentage of gun ownership than democrats.

It’s not just that they own more guns per individual. They have more individuals with guns.

You was speaking in countr terms as was the your before it.

Even still, its like, there is no “we only support the non fascists” from a foreign perspective when it comes to tourism unfortunately.

I mean there is a little bit when it comes to trade, like trading with blue states, but like, its all very intertwined to where youll be funding the fascist regime.

You’re ignoring usecase, and the fact that even according to your facts, they’re super popular.

Yeah nah bud. You’re arresting people trying to leave your country, tourists are getting roughed up, and violence from the government is increasing.

I think your tourism deserves to decrease and you deserve to sleep in the bed you’ve made.

They said need.

They clearly arent interested in it for fun.

Specifically. You can’t afford anything but the most crystal clear case of self defence.

Thats a nice lie that left/center leaning people keep telling themselves.

The reality is that republicans by far have a higher percentage of gun owners.

If there were a fight that started today, there would be a sweep.

Then you have to remember that every force of violence in the US, LEOs, all branches of military, all support trump.