It’s a class war, but ordinary people have been effectively deprived of the ability to realize this. Marx had it right about the need for class consciousness.

I fear Canada will be the USA and Russia’s punching bag when they both get frustrated with how things are going.

Does travel insurance have to pay out if your destination country kidnaps you and sends you to a prison in El Salvador or Cuba?

You guys are wearing trousers? I find it slows down the whole process of throwing feces at my enemies.

Wow. Rising sea levels will improve that place.

They’re unfortunately not nearly elusive enough.

Well that should be possible, especially if your fiancée is Canadian, and even more so when you are married.

There are also all those, in both humanities and sciences, whose projects or departments are denied funding for ideological reasons.

I don’t think you can hold it against a prominent academic and critic of fascism that he doesn’t want to stick around and see what the fascists do to the universities, the philosophy departments, professors like him, and their families. And, believe it or not, here in Canada we have good universities that aren’t under threat, and probably just as much access to US news as you do.

Do these people really think that the fascists will, out of gratitude for their support, spare them while persecuting the rest of their community? Or do they think they can change the fascists’ minds? Have they ever checked how that has gone, historically?

Strategic control of the melting Arctic, half of which is bordered by Russia and the other half by Greenland and Canada, both of which Trump wants to invade. Also a foothold in Greenland would be useful in an assault on Canada, whose resources both Putin and Trump want. Canada would be fully surrounded by the USA and Russia.

What better way to destroy NATO for the Russians?

Stanley recently wrote for the Guardian about a new Department of Education directive that said teaching about systemic racism and other topics could be grounds for a civil rights violation, according to the Trump administration’s legal interpretations. Stanley said this order sets the country “on a path to educational authoritarianism”.

The fascists are still robbing their opponents of the language of dissent by turning its meaning on its head. It is now a “civil rights violation” to claim that there is racism, homophobia, transphobia or sexism in the USA. Civil rights now means protecting the supremacy of straight white men.

At least Trump’s Merdas touch is so powerful that, even when he tries to protect and boost the oil industry, Trump inadvertently fucks the oil industry.

I think there have been societies with genuine protections for free speech, and even in the USA there have been better times and worse. So I wouldn’t say that shutting down free speech is “what we are as a species.” As a species we have many impulses to be hostile to those we disagree with, but we also have the ability to see past these and to build societal systems that protect people’s right to speak freely. It’s up to us whether we pursue the latter or give up.

They’re going after political dissidents and intellectuals first, and coercing universities to help with their surveillance and punishment. This feels so much like Nazi Germany.

The new USA, where people are disappeared every day for their political views. Free speech evaporated overnight when the fascists took power.

They’re disappearing political activists.

“Unfair left leaning” just means “true”.

White House officials said they were vindicated by the latest reporting, pointing to an earlier characterization of the discussions as “war plans,” language which had now shifted to “attack plans.”

So far these have been their arguments in defense of themselves:

1. Hey, this is the first time we’ve catastrophically fucked up on security in a whole two months so treat us with some respect! (And letting an unelected drug-addled Nazi and some disreputable teenagers roam freely through all government computer systems doesn’t count.)
2. We didn’t leak war plans to a journalist, like you all claimed, we leaked attack plans. Totally different so you’re a bunch of liars.
3. Nothing that was leaked was classified. We totally meant the movements of our bombers to be made public before the mission started.

Hands up who thinks these are not utterly ridiculous responses!