"America is going to have to choose to move forward or backward," says President Biden. "Does character in public life still matter?"

"I am going to call for Supreme Court reform" in his remaining six months in office, adds President Biden.

It's still the case that "the soul of the nation is at stake," says President Biden.

"Whether we keep our Republic is now in your hands," says President Biden.

@barney
When Roosevelt tried it in the 1930's he had an enormous electoral mandate to back him. The uber wealthy of that time also had a meltdown, same as now.

Democrats need the same mandate.

The current Supreme Court is clearly corrupt and has become a servant of anti-democracy billionaires.
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/clarence-thomas-harlan-crow-hitler-paintings-nazi-memorabilia-1234711860/

https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/court-packing-supreme-court-roosevelt/

https://supremecourthistory.org/schs-historical-documentaries/fdr-courtpacking-controversy-full-script/

https://www.vox.com/2018/7/2/17513520/court-packing-explained-fdr-roosevelt-new-deal-democrats-supreme-court

@HoustonChron @NMInDepth @NonDoc @PatagoniaRT @TexasMonthly @LoneStarLivecom

Santa Fe New Mexican and Albuquerque Journal!

@HoustonChron @NMInDepth @NonDoc @PatagoniaRT @TexasMonthly @LoneStarLivecom AND, the are several native American news orgs, VERY important out here

@KarenStrickholm Hi Karen, we're going to double check with our topics team but it doesn't look like Santa Fe New Mexican and Albuquerque Journal have Flipboard accounts and if that's the case we can't federate them (though we can potentially add their RSS feeds to our system so Flipboard app users can see their content). What are the names of the native American news orgs that you value? Would love to add them to our system and federate if possible.

People also seem to do much the same with the bible.

'Code is law' was always a shaky understanding of both code and law.

I’m on board generally with your post until the very end. Often plain language readings of the law *are ambiguous* or could be interpreted multiple different ways.

Part of that is that the times change from when the law was written, or perhaps the law was sloppily written (sometimes intentionally).

Legislating is an inherently flawed process since the flaw comes from our humanity. It’s like making sausage. Not an appealing process but the food is often ok.

@OhSeitan

Law and law enforcement are antithetical to decentralization and democracy.

@OhSeitan
Gangs of pushers exist because of rule of law.

@RD4Anarchy they exist because of bad law, it's different.
here in italy we have laws that say that if you throw garbage in the fields you will be fined. it's a good law. laws can be good or bad. anarchism shouldn't be against law but against centralized power.

@OhSeitan @RD4Anarchy

I suspect you are conflating several categories, such as consensus and self-defense, with law.

You can have the former without the latter.

I’m not an anarchist, more like a democratic socialist if I *must* label myself, but I’ve seen the positive side of it forever.

Now I’ve read to the end of the thread. 😬

I’m hesitant but I’m going to ask anyway.
I agree with so many of your statements concerning the law, police, policing, etc.

I’m disabled, living in a vulnerable housing situation. WTF do I do?

Live in a collective that *can* protect us, as in the disabled, elderly vulnerable populations?

Spitballing.☺️

If you’re asking what you should do *now,* I’m not in a position to give you advice about your specific circumstances, though a housing collective sounds nice.

If you’re asking whether communities would cooperatively protect vulnerable members in the absence of the state and police, history at least suggests a resounding “yes!”

Thank you so much for your response!

I was really hoping you’d take my question in the manner intended.

I’m sorry I didn’t make my question perfectly clear. 🌻

Yes, I was asking in the hypothetical and not necessarily concerning my *present* living circumstances but my total dependence on people’s good will.

Thinking in type.

I called LEOs when my husband wandered off for the 1st time. (Dementia) They chastised me for not calling them sooner.
He went to daughters.

ACAB.

@RD4Anarchy @OhSeitan

Anarchism is not premised on a utopian vision of human nature.

“Law enforcement” is incompatible with democracy. Any actor that holds a privileged relationship to the use of violence (re)produces a distinct class with distinct relations to the means of production and antagonistic class relations to the people being policed.

@RD4Anarchy @OhSeitan

“consensus can become privilege over minorities and self-defense cruelty”

This is why we should refuse to institutionalize command and violence—so that every person is free to defend themselves from aggression and so that every person choosing violence must personally bear the costs of that violence.

@OhSeitan @RD4Anarchy

Except police are not a neutral instrument that can be wielded by anyone, including you, for whatever purpose you desire. The police are a coercive institution of the state, which is in turn the bureaucratic arm of the capital class—“a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie.”

Your littering example is telling—that the state punishes littering (via the bourgeoisie mechanism of the fine) while letting corporate polluters literally destroy our ecosystem is a classic example of the state behaving coercively against us while appearing to care about the environment.

@RD4Anarchy @OhSeitan

> “what am I supposed to do in your ideal democracy”

Why do you assume a punitive mechanism of “damages”?

@OhSeitan @RD4Anarchy

There’s no need to be a condescending asshole

@OhSeitan @RD4Anarchy

Your question is premised on false assumptions I would encourage you to critically interrogate, but do as you please

@RD4Anarchy slipping away from my simple question i mean, my english is terrible

@OhSeitan @RD4Anarchy

If it pleases you to believe that’s what I’m doing, you’re of course to believe that

@OhSeitan @RD4Anarchy

If it pleases you to believe that’s what I’m doing, you’re of course welcome to believe that

@OhSeitan
Individually owned and operated automobiles, pervasive market exchange, and jobs 🤷‍♂️

All these things require coercion and hierarchical power structures to establish and maintain as "normal".

This "normal" is not sustainable. You're asking how to continue these things that are killing us. There is no good answer to this.

@RD4Anarchy @OhSeitan

The very idea of “paying damages” is predicated on a system of punitive monetary responsibility that doesn’t seem like something that people would choose if free.

I can’t answer a question like “how would it work if we changed literally nothing else but abolished the police.” It doesn’t make any sense.

@OhSeitan @RD4Anarchy

The ruder you are, the less interested I am in engaging with you

@UnassumingKiwi
i don't know where you live but in italy there is also good police that help citizens, also bad police obviously
@HeavenlyPossum @RD4Anarchy

@OhSeitan @UnassumingKiwi @RD4Anarchy

There are no good cops.

Sometimes, cops do things that are useful to people as a byproduct to their actual functions. That doesn’t mean cops exist to do good things, or that the useful things they do are intended to benefit us.

If the behavior of institutions depended on the “goodness” of their members, then we could make no theoretical statements about the behavior of institutions. It would all be down to random chance.

@OhSeitan @RD4Anarchy

It’s so much easier for you to imagine that I am “covering” for something that I have written about at great length than it is for you to reflect on your own behavior.

@Waitnwallflower Yes! Checking it off on my list of accomplishments.

@Waitnwallflower

read this as "choking it off . . . "

still boogying, one assumes

@jerry granted, I’d trust Jerry over musk, zuck, and all the others, but I’m sure Jerry doesn’t want that responsibility at all.

@XenoPhage @jerry Age verification means everyone has to use government IDs. There have already been leaks involving third-party authentication, by the way.

@joeo10 @XenoPhage @jerry Well, the theory is that third-party authenticators do the verifying and then "delete" the data. But you can imagine all the ways that can and does go wrong, even before courts and governments start making demands.

@joeo10 @XenoPhage @jerry It is not, by the way, in any way a sure thing that this Supreme Court would go along with this. They are very First Amendment originalists, by and large.

@XenoPhage @jerry You never know with THIS Supreme Court though as we saw last month. If they feel that a opportunity to suppress minorities and marginalized communities is in play then they'll go along with it.

We'll see though.

@joeo10 @XenoPhage @jerry Their recent ruling regarding NetChoice is at least a bit encouraging.

They'll find out that most people won't do that.

AKA the "VPN Full Employment Act."

@zeitverschreib @jerry @XenoPhage

The person/people in charge of those instances.

@Joe Ortiz

Please define "all admins".

@Jerry Bell :verified_paw: :donor: :verified_dragon: :rebelverified:​ @XenoPhage :verified: @Lauren Weinstein

@jerry @zeitverschreib @joeo10 @XenoPhage Looking at the exemptions is a trap. First, from a user standpoint, if you use any of the covered sites, you have to use your government ID, and be linked in such a way that any post you make on any of those sites can be associated and reported. More to your point, the plan is clearly to start at the top and work down to ALL sites with public access, because the goal is limit and track access to ANY material considered inappropriate for children, but whatever current definition is in vogue.

@zeitverschreib @joeo10 @XenoPhage I’m as up for a good freak out about harmful laws the US tries to pass, but I encourage everyone to carefully read both proposed laws, specifically who is exempted, before we jump to assumptions about the demise of the fediverse