If you don’t believe that there will be death squads (I’m not trying to convince you there will be), you are not the target of my question. Many people around Lemmy today are saying things like “you’ve just killed all trans people” or “I’m going to be hunted for sport now,” very much believing that they are part of an “isolated minority sect or fantasy guild or some wack shit like that.” These people do believe that there will be death squads.

PM if you need recommendations

Your community in this case doesn’t mean your neighborhood. Your community means the people who you identify with and/or care about. If you truly believe that your neighbors are on the cusp of becoming death squads who are ready to gun down all the [insert your people] in town, it might be a good idea to have your friends know that the plan is to meet up at someone’s place that is more defensible. Or to get to the least mobile person. Or to get in a car with a particular destination in mind. Whatever your plan is, if the enemy is armed, it might be a good idea to also be armed.

🤝

When you say wait for the enemy to attack, how will you defend your community in that eventuality if you haven’t trained to do so?

Depends on what you consider expensive. For general purpose training, 9mm rounds (pistol) are easily found at about 25c each and 5.56 (rifle) are found at about 40c each.

It’s exactly what I did the last time orange man was in office, so yes, me first. Now you. Let’s hit the range together.

Many believe they are saving the country by voting for Trump. Everyone sees that America is going downhill. Everything is more expensive, more uncertain, more precarious. Leftists blame corporations and corporate capture of government agencies. Right wingers think that more corporate power is good and if left unchecked, the “free market” (aka government rules that favor unchecked corporate malfeasance) will be better for America.

People vote for their economic interests, as best as they can understand them. Most on the right think that their economic interests are served by corporate deregulation and scapegoating of immigrants. However, within that context, this is also why removing social security is not realistic. That’s a direct attack on people’s benefits, which they are not in favor of. Right wing corporate types want to cut social security so they don’t have to pay taxes, or there will be more money in the government coffers to give back to the corporations. But the majority of right wing people that the corporate types rely on for votes will never vote to repeal social security.

To everyone in here saying that this is the end of democracy and this is the end times, what is stopping you from buying a gun and training with other liberals/leftists? Or are you just going to keel over and die?

Wouldn’t your comment equally apply to being a small business owner (let’s say blacksmith) under feudalism? As a good blacksmith, you will earn more clients and prestige, while poor blacksmiths won’t get repeat business. You might be able to expand your forge and hire more people to do the tedious work of making chainmail or whatever.

I don’t know that anyone can ever provide an “objective” source on capitalism. Anyone who writes on the topic has inherent biases. Here are a few: https://www.amazon.com/Democracy-at-Work-Cure-Capitalism/dp/1608462471

https://www.amazon.com/Slow-Down-Manifesto-KOHEI-SAITO/dp/1662602723

https://www.chelseagreen.com/product/doughnut-economics-paperback/

https://www.amazon.com/What-Wrong-Capitalism-Ruchir-Sharma/dp/1668008262

https://www.amazon.com/There-Are-No-Accidents-Disaster_Who/dp/1982129689

https://www.amazon.com/Deaths-Despair-Future-Capitalism-Anne/dp/0691217076

If you have an extra bedroom that you can use exclusively as an office, it’s pretty great. When you’re in your office, that’s “work”, and the rest of your house is “not work”.

Here’s an explainer: https://www.npr.org/2024/07/21/g-s1-12556/kamala-harris-coconut-tree-meme-context-unburdened

That’s just the government though, similar to how a lot of the systems in the US still run on COBOL (including the IRS).