Disillusionist

Thank you for kicking this hornet’s nest. There is a lot of great info and enthusiasm here, all of which is sorely needed.

We have massive and widespread attention paid to every cause under the sun by social and traditional media, with movements and protests (deservedly) filling the streets. Yet this issue which is as central and crucial to our freedoms as any rights currently being fought for (it intersects with each of them directly), continues to be sidelined and given the foil hat treatment.

We can’t even adequately talk about things like disinformation, political extremism, and even mental health without addressing the role our technologies play, which has been hijacked by these bad actors, robber barons selling us ease and convenience and promises of bright, shiny, and Utopian futures while conning us out of our liberty.

With the widespread, rapidly declining state of society, and the dramatic rise and spread of technologies like AI, there has never been a more urgent need to act collectively against these invasive practices claiming every corner of our lives.

We need those of you recognize this crisis for what it is, we need your voices in the discussions surrounding the many problems and challenges we face at this critical moment. We need public awareness to have hope of changing this situation for the better.

As many of you have pointed out, the most immediate step we need to take is disengagement with the products and services that are surveiling, exploiting, and manipulating us. Look to alternatives, ask around, don’t be afraid to try something new. Deprive them of both your engagement and your data.

Keep going, keep resisting, do the small things you can do. As the saying goes, small things add up over time. Keep going.

[Edited slightly for clarity]

Hilarious. I bite my tongue so often around these kinds of situations it has permanent tooth imprints in it. But you’re right, someone needs to figure out how to get them to stop tolerating this horrific nonsense.

No secret, ML is Marxist-Leninist. They tend to have a similar focus and way of framing things as what I’m picking up from you.

Odd statement to cut and flip around out of all of that text. Reminds me a lot of ML.

I wouldn’t put much past the current American administration. I haven’t been able to shake this impression that we might really be looking a the telegraphing of an invasion. From what we know and have seen, the administration is very much itching to apply the fullest extent of its powers. It’s defined by unprecedented and extraordinary use of extralegal action and complete disregard for how it might be seen by the world at large.

They said for years that Russia wouldn’t move on Ukraine, and then green men marched in and took over Crimea. It’s no secret how much America is becoming increasingly like Russia in every way. US already has significant military presence in Greenland — a green men play would be really easy. And Greenland also has a surprising number of politicians who openly say that they prefer the security offered by Trump’s America over Denmark, even as they declare that they want independence (experts argue that independence might make them even more vulnerable to takeover right now). It’s easy to assume that at least some Greenland doors would open up to an American green man advance.

Also, as far as consequences for taking over Greenland, we seem to be primarily looking at a breakup of NATO — something that is also on this US administration’s longstanding wish list. Experts don’t seem to think it’s ultimately likely to result in an actual war so much as make it crystal clear that the old rules no longer apply, and that the US isn’t a friend (the Article 5 debate is shaky, especially against the prospect of actually going to war against America, and especially while NATO is also dealing with the Russian war in Ukraine). On paper it kind of reads like a win-win-win situation for the current brazen, imperialist, and isolationist American kleptocracy.

I’d say we at least need to take this stuff seriously.