To add to Wolf’s really well thought out and written post, as kids a ringing phone was something you were expected to answer. Voice mail and caller ID were common by 2000 to the point of being essentially everywhere, but not everybody had it before then and that meant that if the phone rang, you HAD to pick it up. The only way to avoid it was to not be home.

Then when cell phones happened, as Wolf already said, Millennials had them so parents could keep track of you even when you weren’t at home and calls were pricey enough that they were really for emergencies only, not for talking with friends, so they were just another leash for helicopter parents to control their kids with, like putting gps trackers on kids’ cars nowadays. They weren’t even smart phones at that point, so all they could really do was call or text.

And then jobs started expecting you to be available in your off time. You know the meme about Americans being available out of the office by cell phone during surgery? That exists because there was a period where bosses everywhere expected to be able to call you at all hours of the day to check your email or answer questions and work unpaid. It’s gotten better now to some degree, but it’s still definitely a cultural thing. I’ve heard plenty of people complaining about getting a call from their boss asking them to come in on their day off.

There was a short period of time where phones were cool and people did stuff like make custom ringtones, but I’ve had enough spam calls wake me up at 4am, people calling and “ruining the mood” with a gf or whatever, and even getting called by a parent who threatened to call 911 on me because I didn’t respond to their text within 10 minutes that a ringing phone does nothing but piss me off now. I’ve heard that Gen Z/Alpha just permanently leave their phones on silent, and I completely get it. The act of privacy of simply being unreachable is lost in today’s world.

This isn’t a “grrr, Russians r bad and evil 😡 USA number 1! 😲🥵🍆💦” statement, it’s a “we know he’s on one payroll, but just exactly how many is he really on” statement. Because it’s been known for ages that he has connections to Russian organized crime. The FBI has been trying to get charges to stick on it since the 80s.

They own a lot of Trump property and he’s been given tons of “gifts” by them over the years - including boats, airplanes, and cars. It’s believed that a lot of his failed businesses were money laundering schemes for Russian crime syndicates (every single one of his businesses except his father’s real estate empire have gone bankrupt). How else do you explain bankrupting not just one, but two casinos? They’re practically designed to print money! And then there was the whole “Trump Beauty Pageant” thing. You know, the one where he would fly around the country in his private jet, just him and a bunch of underage girls. Oh, and Jeffrey Epstein. I almost forgot that he went along for the rides, too. Can’t forget that his favorite part was “when he would open the door on the girls while they were in the dressing room getting ready.”

Anyway, getting a bit off topic there. Not only would it benefit Russia to have an egomaniac leading the country (don’t correct your enemy while they’re making a mistake and all that), but it would be of great use to have a man willing to smuggle confidential documents to Mar A Lago and sell them for the right price in that seat.

Transgender rights

You mean the rights that largely don’t exist in half of the US?

As of July 2025, 40.1% or 120,400 trans youth aged 13-17 are living in the 27 states that have passed bans on gender-affirming care. This includes 2,300 youth living in the two states–Arkansas and Montana–where bans are currently on hold or blocked from enforcement through court orders.

While our map focuses solely on high school-aged youth (age 13-17), some states, such as Oklahoma, Texas, and South Carolina, have considered banning care for transgender people up to 26 years of age. Additionally, several states prohibit public funds from being used to provide transgender health care for anyone, so adults are also unable to access critical health services if they receive their healthcare through Medicaid, if they work in the public sector, or are incarcerated.

Trans people were already reporting their identifying documents like passports, birth certificates, driver’s licenses, and social security cards were being confiscated in the period after the election and before Trump got into office.

We haven’t “won” trans rights, we’ve only had them because the fascists hadn’t yet gotten around to destroying them. Violence in one form or another is a requirement for successful change, whether that violence be economic or otherwise. The oppressor isn’t going to give you justice simply because you demand it. It wasn’t until after MLK was murdered and billions of dollars in property damage were done that Civil Rights were drafted, voted on, and signed into law - one week of rioting after his death.

Can they, though? How many of them actually changed, and how many simply went into hiding?

One of the biggest issues that led us to this point was the tolerance of the racist uncle, the antisemitic grandfather just because “he’s from a different time” or whatever. Many of these people never changed, we just started accepting it when it was couched in the right social rules.

It’s well known that Trump grew up around former Nazis and active white supremacists. His family’s culture growing up was steeped in it.

One of the things about cults is that followers fall into a sunk cost fallacy that means that the longer they’ve been a member and the deeper in they are, the harder they are to get out until there’s a line beyond which it becomes basically impossible. Because to admit they were wrong is to admit that their beliefs were wrong, that their actions weren’t justified, and that they’re not the good person that they think they are.

People like you are why I’m so fed up with Europeans after the past 2 months. So angry that you can have the facts right in front of you but can’t put them together to see that 2 plus 2 is 4, only use them as fuel for 2 different sides of your argument. You point out how fucked things are here in one breath but don’t acknowledge that they’ve been fucked since before most of the people here were born and then blame us for not having the power to fix it with your next.

Do you get this angry at the Chinese, North Koreans, or Russians for not deposing Putin or the CCP? Because, newsflash, America is the most propagandized country in the world and has a militarized domestic police force. The US and Russia are far more similar than most people realize or want to admit/acknowledge.

Our children pledge their undying loyalty to the country every morning to the flag that is installed in every classroom in the country. There are only two other countries in the world with similar practices, and one of them was the Hitler’s Youth program in Nazi Germany. Military recruiters stalk the halls of our high schools and follow kids to their houses using the personal information given to them by the schools, including calling their personal cell phone numbers, to convince them to join the military. Hollywood is a massive pro US military machine. Any time you see a tank, jet, naval ship, or anything else in a superhero movie, it was bought and paid for to be in there by the US military with the stipulation that it be on the good guys side.

Any safeguards and checks and balances our system had were actively eroded starting all the way back to the reconciliation after the Civil War, from ensuring that the votes of leftists count for less than the votes of conservatives - if and when they aren’t just drowned out by cutting up the voting districts to bury them under as much red as possible - to putting people in places of import whose loyalties lie with the party first and foremost.

There isn’t a single country in the EU where a president or prime minister would have the power on their own to just decide and bomb fishermen, or abduct a leader of another country, or fuck children and get away with this.

And neither should Trump. The reason that he can get away with it is because the people who should be holding him accountable - from the justice system to the politicians to the military - are in on it. There are no legal systems that haven’t been undermined to make this very thing possible.

Hitler wasn’t elected, but he came in second and was appointed Chancellor by the incumbent president as per tradition because the Nazis were elected as the majority party in the Reichstag. Sound familiar? A minority party working their way into a leadership role that gave them full control of the country? At its height, the Nazi party made up about 15% of the German population. 15% was all it took to bring the entire world into one of the worst wars in history that left the Jewish population so decimated that they have only returned to pre-WW2 levels within the past 20 or so years. Republicans are not a majority party either and would actually never hold any major office again if votes were counted fairly. 60% of Americans are more leftist than the government at any given time - even when the Democrats hold power.

So why didn’t the Germans fight back against the Nazi party as things got bad? Trick question. They did. With guns, too. Except the Nazis had a quasi military force already deployed in order to put down any opposition. Sounds familiar? Because the US had that long before ICE and the DHS (who are both governmental bodies beholden to no-one) were formed following 9/11. Our police are a bunch of schoolyard bullies with surplus military hardware donated by the army or bought from the government and military industrial complex, taught to shoot first and ask never. Did you know that it’s a war crime to use tear gas? It’s considered chemical warfare. Except when you use it against your own citizens, then it’s okay. And they were born with itchy trigger fingers. Especially against anybody with skin a shade darker than pasteurized milk. Deporting people for looking too Mexican? We did that in the 50s, under Eisenhower. It was called Operation Wetback. We rounded up US citizens using military tactics and tossed them over the border into Mexico.

The government and corporations destroyed our unions and social support systems in order to erode worker’s rights and ensure loyalty through dependence. People often talk about how much money Americans make, but don’t see that the CoL is so much higher here that we’re worse off than any European country in terms of quality of life. The average lifespan of the average American has decreased for several years consecutively and is now equivalent to that of the average lifespan of the worst area of the UK. Americans are the most likely to die from preventable dieseases because we can’t afford preventative care. If you take the average cost of a house in any county in the country and compare it to the average salary in that same area, you’ll find that there is not a single place in the US where the average salary can buy a house. We are a 3rd world nation in a Prada belt.

So don’t blame the people working with sticks and stones for not having stemmed the tide, blame the people trying to smash down the shitty dam with hammers and the people who set the course of the river.

As a trans woman, I’d rather take my chances charging ICE agents with a knife than trust you lot to have my back in any way, shape, or form. I’ve seen what you think of us who are trapped here. Over and over.

Sorry if I’d like ANY response to the attacks on trans people across Europe, the UK, Canada, and plenty of other places.

I want people out there like the Black Panthers, too. I want Europe to divest themselves from the American military industrial complex. I want to watch American companies who support and enable these fascists see their profits shrivel up as the economy collapses. I want to watch Google and Facebook and Twitter burn.

But all I hear from Europeans on here is how all Americans are fascists for not being in open war with the regime while fascism tightens its grip on your own right-wing parties, and I’m sick of it. If you’re not proactive, you’ll be in the same boat as us. Italy had fascist gangs attacking people in the streets a few years back. We used to say “it could never happen here” when reading about Nazi Germany and wondering just how they could let it happen. And then it did happen here. Now you’re the ones saying it.

I am hating on Europeans. Because Europeans have been hating on me and mine for almost a year now, regardless of what people do here.

Fascist gangs were roaming the streets of Italy a few years ago. Your fascist parties have been waging war against trans people like me for over a decade. Where is your resistance to them? Your solidarity with the weakest amongst you?

European hate is misplaced. All we want is justice and a good society, but we have to fight against 70 years of work to destroy our ability to fight as well as the ignorant and hateful minority of the populace who support these fuckers, and they’re the ones the most willing to commit acts of terrorism. The people protesting are the average person who balks at the thought of fist-fighting in the street.

The protests last year were some of the largest in US history. There have been smaller protests popping up constantly since the first few months of the regime.

The protests last year were some of the largest in US history, up there with and possibly larger than during the Vietnam War and Civil Rights Movement.

But go ahead and ignore those. Keep proving my original post right.

It took a decade for the Civil Rights protests to get any real change to happen, and that was only after the murder of MLK caused the black community to burn down entire city districts and cause billions of dollars worth of property damage. Your average person - even in Europe - won’t go that far unless pushed.

Europeans were perfectly fine with Nazi fascism right up until it was knocking down their door. They’ve been perfectly fine with allowing their right-wing parties to fall further and further into fascism right alongside the US. Italy had fascist gangs roaming the streets attacking people a few years back. You’ve been perfectly content to watch as European politicians target people like me almost as badly as Republicans have. Where are your protests in support of trans people? I guess it doesn’t affect you, so you don’t care.

So go ahead and keep acting like you’re so much better than Americans. All of you are just proving my point and showing the exact reason that I’ve had enough of Europe and Canada. Pot, meet kettle.

I’ve been in full support of anything Europe and Canada are doing to hurt America and fix their own issues, but the constant vitriol against the people who actually want to fight the fight has made me sick of the armchair generals all over Lemmy.

“But why don’t Americans protest? All they do is sit back and take it up the ass!” I hear every European crying as they ignore this right alongside all the other protests.

Combine the two ideas and make cheesy garlic bread with them.

Honestly, the issue is deeper than that. Your government has been fighting a war on science and reason almost as long as ours has. Politicians and CEOs in your country have been hungrily watching what politicians allow them to get away with in our country for over half a century. It’s why they keep pushing for privatized healthcare for you and countries like the UK. The one that I’ll never forget was around 2010 when a conservative administration came into power and immediately shut down a multi-year study on UBI halfway through and then sealed the reports because it showed that all the things that they lie about are false. The only 2 groups to drop out of the workforce were pregnant women and students, graduation rates increased, as did college admission applications, and the economy in the area where the study took place saw a general boom as people were willing to spend more money. And all of that was on maybe a $1,500 a month UBI if I remember right.

I literally had this happen with my desktop last night, and it’s entirely down to Windows actively choosing to go into sleep mode or not. No activity on the computer, click on sleep, the monitors go off and I started to walk away except I noticed that my keyboard and mouse were still on (the first things to turn off when Windows goes to sleep for me) and the fans were still running. Wiggled the mouse and it had only turned the monitors off. I tried it 2 or 3 more times and Windows kept doing the same thing - putting the monitors to sleep and nothing else. I eventually just straight up shut it down with the power button.

I always love the duality of comments on this topic. America’s military is a Schrodinger’s Military at this point, both terrifying and completely non-existent basically depending on what time of day the conversation happens at.

Canadians can’t help because the military is so powerful (completely obvious and understandable) but also, like somebody up above said, “Americans are feckless sheep” for not shooting up the White House yet.

Everybody’s a hero until it’s their life on the line.

Unfortunately for the US, the rich have spent the decades since the Civil Rights Movement convincing the general populace that their rights were won by holding a snarky sign on a street corner and not by burning down entire city districts after the murder of MLK by the government (which his family proved in court, by the way. Unfortunately, no criminal court would hear the case so it was only in a civil court, but the judge was convinced well enough to find the government guilty).

Years of protesting and nothing solid was accomplished. Within a week of billions of dollars in damage to property and big business, the Civil Rights laws were drafted, voted on, and signed into law.

Unions are the peaceful alternative for negotiations that workers and their bosses agreed upon instead of dragging them out of the factory into the street and beating them to death.

More people need to remember this history.

Even MLK credited the success of his work during the Civil Rights Movement to the Black Panthers being willing to do what he could not, and the Million Man March on Washington - seen today as an example of successful peaceful protest - was a threat to every white American in a seat of power. If he could mobilize a million people to shut down the capital of the federal government peacefully, imagine what else they could do.

Everybody thinks “it could never happen here” right up until it does. We said the same exact thing learning about Nazi Germany in school. Keep an eye out, because I’d say Canada is probably about 10 years behind the US.

Your conservative party has been eyeballing the Republicans as role models for decades, and you had plenty of Trump supporters marching not too long ago. I’ve been watching the Canadian war on science since the conservative administration from 20-25 years ago shut down a decade-long study on the effects of UBI halfway through and sealed the documents because they didn’t like the results that showed that there were noticeable drops in employment in only two groups - pregnant women and students - and that other effects included improved grade scores and graduation rates, increased college enrollment, and a general improvement in the local economy.

So why haven’t you marched down here yourself and taken up the good fight? Or are you just an armchair general making excuses for not protecting freedom and democracy in the world because you’re too chickenshit to actually put your money where your mouth is?

Guess what, everybody’s a hero until it’s their life on the line, and then the truth comes out: the average person is too scared to give up their homes, their food, and their lives. A cornered animal will bite, but if you leave it even one avenue of escape 9 out of 10 times it will bolt.

I was literally just about to post this:

Multiple forms of life evolve to fill an extent niche.

No no no, you’ve got it backwards. It’s .ml users who’d get mad at you for comparing China and the US. “It’s a false equivalency!”

Like I had happen to me just the other day when I compared the US regime’s invasion to the invasion of Ukraine and the lack of any real response from world leaders.