octopus_ink

I (*very explicitly and vocally not a communist) left .ml because of all the shit flinging from .world and yes sometimes .ca, among others. It was the only negative experience I had in over a year of keeping my account there that was related to where my account was.

@StupidBrotherInLaw@lemmy.world is exactly correct.

And here we are again, the monthly "Tankies are the bane of Lemmy!!11!!" post, wherein we have:

• People who claim to not know what the term means.
• People arguing about what the term means.
• People arguing about what the term should mean.
• People who swear they've never met one on Lemmy.
• People who apparently find them so often it ruins Lemmy for them.
• A lot of assumptions about folks just for being members of .ml.
• In sum, a lot of angst over something people can solve themselves if they are truly that aggrieved, by blocking individual users or the entire instance.

Fucking A people, you largely control your own experience on the Fediverse, that's one of the things that makes it great.

In addition, when choosing an instance (both times) I made sure to pick one that was defederated from Threads, because that was important to me. I'm sure there are instances that are defederated from .ml. If blocking the entire instance yourself or individual users yourself is somehow not enough, no one is stopping you from picking an instance that is defederated from .ml or asking your instance admin (who may very well tell you to FO as is their right) to defederate.

Edit: And you are welcome to search my username at .ml and see how much of what I posted was anti-Trump. Spoiler alert: nearly all of it.

I'm rooting for team arteriosclerosis.

Yep, I'm as prone to confirmation bias as anyone.

Turns out it was from 2020, but that doesn't alter my take much. As presented to me I didn't recognize that. Post now edited.

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/06/12/trump-george-floyd-protesters-315532

Thank you, as presented to me I didn't recognize that. Edited title and body.

I confess that in the context where I saw this I did not realize that!

Personally I think it's been glaringly obvious since sometime during his first term that he's not all there, and every time there is discussion about "whether" he has cognitive issues I am stunned that the discussion isn't instead "he has cognitive issues, what do we do about it?"

Update on the second one here! https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2025/04/ozturk-detained-ice-dhs-inhaler-medical-care-disability-rights-tufts/

What we are seeing in the last few months of this administration is not the traditional Republican party. Trump has hijacked the Republican party much like Hitler hijacked the Nazi party. There is no more Republican party- it’s the Trump party.

I'm in my mid 50s, as context.

I:

• just missed being old enough for awareness of key events in the civil rights movement, but:

• grew up in a very racially diverse area, surrounded by people who lived those events

• Lived through through/witnessed:

  • the Satanic Panic
  • the Tipper Gore, 700 Club/Pat Robertson heyday
  • the pre- and post- dont-ask-don't-tell period in the military
  • the AIDS Epidemic and homophobia feedback loop that came with it
  • the steady progression as it became more and more acceptable over decades for gay people to be open about their sexuality
  • the beginnings of the same thing happening for trans people
  • and more changes to and challenges to our social norms than I will possibly remember to list here, all along with each and every step of progress continuously made against the strong opposition of conservatives.

• then watched as the entire Republican party gleefully worked to destroy and roll back all areas of progress the very moment they had enough power to do so. They are shitting up the place and destroying as much as they can, as wantonly as they can.

From the rank and file infiltrating and twisting local school boards and libraries all the way up to the whitehouse, they are making things as shitty as they can as fast as they can for as many people as they can. And it didn't start 2.5 months ago, you could feel it from the moment Trump took office the first time, though even then it was just a louder version of what was already clearly under the surface for decades. We are literally headed towards some freaky blend of WWII Germany and Gilead.

Everything being done now is something conservatives and Republicans I've known have been preaching to a greater or lesser degree for as long as I can remember. They were just better in couching it behind nice words back then, and less of them were comfortable being vocal about it. As far as I can tell, Trump has hijacked nothing and no one.

Resistance to him by Republicans at any level has been weak to undetectable the entire time, coming from a tiny minority of (now ousted) Republicans, and that is precisely what gives the lie to this idea that he hijacked a damn thing.

The commenter saying to line them all up is being ridiculous, of course, but they aren't getting any disdain they haven't earned, and in any case they aren't interested in having unity with anyone not like them anyhow, so I don't see any point whatsoever in this idea that we're supposed to talk nice and mollycoddle them into some kind of class-aware coalition. That ship has sailed.

a great many edits

Not one time have I seen a Republican acknowledge those statistics, no matter in what form they are presented. Not once.

Which is not a knock against you, but yet more evidence how how willfully they will bury their heads in the sand if you encourage them to hate people they already want to hate + tell them they are patriots for doing so.

I will go to my grave before I support a Republican for anything. I wouldn't vote for a Republican for street sweeper.