After this's all over, I hope the U.S. gov't bills Trump for the damage he's done to our reputation

[dubkitty]

there’s a bumper sticker i see on Facebook i want to get: THE DESPAIR IS OVERWHELMING YET I REMAIN SILLY” with a rollerskating cat. i’m sure i’d be the guy executed for cracking wise to the Obersturmfuhrer in the National Security Camp.

as ancient hippie raconteur Wavy Gravy once said, “if you can’t laugh about it, it ain’t funny.”

[Gone Fission]

Sometimes you can wring out some gallows humor but it isn’t really a sign that the situation is in fact funny. Along with many of my other copes, that one has been straining lately.

[LaoWiz]

Hang in there, man.

I live in Monterey Park which is 10 minutes east of downtown Los Angeles. East of downtown is prominently Hispanic/Latino and such a huge swath of land and ICE is straight up everywhere out here right now. Absolutely terrorizing the community. Like I am actually shocked to be hearing how many locations they are at. All areas I go to all the time. And I'm pretty sure they will be in the area for a really LONG time. So it's pretty frightening. I'm not really scared for myself as I am half white and have a white last name but super paranoid about them fucking with my wife and stepsons. One of my stepsons just got his driver's license 2 weeks ago and he thinks my wife and I are living in fear and overreacting so now we are going to be paranoid every time he fucking goes out. If this is just the beginning it's going to be brutal. Take all the precautions you can. ICE are going to schools and businesses. I heard they were posted at a grocery store checking peoples' IDs as they came out. It's fucking brutal and I am so angry.

I'm glad some of you can laugh. I really am.

Meanwhile, I lie awake wondering when my in laws will be dissapeared off the street simply for existing.

I sob late into the night wondering if my children will live to see adult hood.

I force away vomit through hyperventilation wondering if my and my wife will get to die old, happy and together.

I sit outside at 4am in my studio, staring at the sky towards San Francisco. Wondering when I'll see a sudden white flash followed by nothingness. Unaware as everything I know and love is wiped from history.

God I wish I could laugh. All I want is to laugh.

At least I can keep trying to sedate myself. A coma would be better than living like this.

[Blackened Soul]

I would just like to take a minute to thank the DNC for not taking this seriously for last 25 years when some of us have been trying to warn them that placating these people only made them stronger. Thanks guys!

[dubkitty]

they prefer this to a leftist solution because under fascism they still have a role to play while true solutions render them totally irrelevant.

[Gone Fission]

Under fascism their party is about to be outlawed, so that role might then be to join those deported to the concentration camps.

[Chankgeez]

[Gone Fission]

At least he’s got Billy-Corgan-on-a-rollercoaster-level disappointment going.

[Gone Fission]

We were already up to the Posse Comitatus statute being violated what, just last week. (And with no comment from the militia movement on their old fave rave.)

But, fuck, why not just add a war crime to the tally (which is also without any legal authority in U.S. law)?

[dubkitty]

the only “law” that will effectively stop American imperialism is the law of the jungle. like Nazi Germany, the US can only be checked by massive force and violence.

[Seance]

I'm glad some of you can laugh. I really am.

Meanwhile, I lie awake wondering when my in laws will be dissapeared off the street simply for existing.

I sob late into the night wondering if my children will live to see adult hood.

I force away vomit through hyperventilation wondering if my and my wife will get to die old, happy and together.

I sit outside at 4am in my studio, staring at the sky towards San Francisco. Wondering when I'll see a sudden white flash followed by nothingness. Unaware as everything I know and love is wiped from history.

God I wish I could laugh. All I want is to laugh.

At least I can keep trying to sedate myself. A coma would be better than living like this.

It has been scientifically proven that a person holding their arm in excruciatingly cold water, if they swear like a sailor, can withstand far more time submerged in that water than can someone who doesn't swear.

Swearing and humor are not identical, but humor is a survival mechanism. It gives meaning and shape to life. It articulates and protects the core of who we are when subjected to unspeakable cruelty. Isolated and on its own, humor is not enough, but it is a powerful catalyst to thought and action. It shifts perspective (often requiring a multifaceted, deep understanding of several circumstances and the associative mechanisms associated with all those circumstances in order to conflate them or contrast them in such a way to induce a "Eureka!" moment of solidarity and connection between a group of people wherein our humanity and laughter come bubbling forth uncontrollably).

When trying to resist and respond to inconceivable cruelty and stupidity and lawlessness, we have to retain all that makes us human.

In the past, when people were forced to go through forms of wantonly stupid cruelty not unlike aspects of what is happening now, some have used humor or wit to try to withstand it or to explain it or to deflate or defeat it.

It's worthwhile to study what tactics have been used in the past when a numerically small minority grabs power and seeks to terrorize the entire populace. They seek to break what makes us human and spread fear so that we police ourselves. Of course the "surveillance state" tactics possible now are far different (but so are the avenues of resistance and communication).


This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen by Tadeusz Borowski.


Survival in Auschwitz by Primo Levi.

[Seance]

Shifty by Adam Curtis (parts 1 & 2 of 5):
https://youtu.be/9qtIbWNMwKY?si=x8bCbk546RGWaNU4

https://youtu.be/x7cAPe0dkL8?si=DV1Bb7RX2a8QolpD