This is literally my parents. They told me to stop criticizing the people in power, even going as far as saying I shouldn’t criticize the government of my former country. I don’t even have citizenship in my former country anymore, not sure how I could even get in trouble for criticizing is effecively a foreign country to me. (I’m talking about PRC btw).
My mom told me to “just focus on improving your own life and stop worrying about things like you can’t control like politics” (as in, both the politics of my former country and the politics of my current country)
Am I in the wrong here? Should I just keep quiet and not say anything so that I don’t “get in trouble”?
You don’t realize how much you have to lose until you do. You could become homeless or deported if you get caught under this administration.
We’re reaching a point where the government is deporting green card users for protesting against Israel’s genocide. It won’t be long until US Citizens get the same treatment. And don’t think for a second that you’d be the only one punished. You could be dragging your entire family down with you.
So unless you’re willing to become jailed, homeless, or deported, id listen to your parents.
Im ASD and diagnosed with major depression and on SSD.
That means I’m high up on the purge list anyway.
We’re all on that list. Even those of you who keep their head down. That’s the point of the Niemöller poem, especially since Trump’s shadowy masters are not trying to become dictator for life rather to bleed the federal general fund for a while before skedaddling to Switzerland or Liechtenstein.
You can’t lie low on this one as if it’s a protracted storm. At least I can’t.
Let me put it this way. If I was Tank Man I would have regretted that decision for the rest of my life while I was being tortured to death. Why would I do something that I would regret?
That is a fair assessment, and in a world where life is expected to be stable and tolerable, it is stongly tempting to keep your head down.
China may be that kind of stable, though from what I hear, they disappear people for benign offenses, and people have to manage their social rating. Not easy to do when you’re, say, gay, or neurodivergent, or Uyghur. I can’t help but wonder if the acceptable norm is shrinking, and the list of undesirables is growing.
Here in the states, it already is growing. And unless you’re doing sexual favors for a billionaire or are indispensable to a billionaire, you’re on the purge list, just further down than homeless folk and Latins.
Granted you might rather just be summarily executed than tortured. I personally am terrified by the marks on the interior walls of the Auschwitz death camp genocide chambers where the victims were clawing as they died. In the current path of least resistance, I’ll be making those marks one day, or rather will perish from malnutrition in CECOT.
If I have to go out suffering, I’d rather I made a difference. If I lie low, I might as well commit suicide, which I’ve actually considered except that would cause harm to others connected to me.
It’ll also suck for them when ICE comes for me and my neighbors are silent.
what’s SSD?
Social Security Disability.
One of the things Musk is trying to kill because I am allegedly useless.
Musk is about to learn there are practical reasons to assure the wellbeing of non-workers, including NEETs.
We often sre useful, just in ways not recognized by pure transactionalists and capitalists. And those uses can and do turn renegade.
My generations parents? The lead chip eating boomers that helped fuck america? Pass.