- cross-posted to:
- politics@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- politics@lemmy.world
Summary
Musk’s DOGE team is conducting opaque “one-way interviews” with civil servants, raising concerns over transparency and accountability significantly.
Federal workers report being interrogated about their roles and colleagues’ performance, while Musk’s aides refuse to reveal their full names.
Under the DOGE banner, Musk’s team now controls vital agencies including USAID and the Office of Personnel Management.
Civil servants are resorting to encrypted messaging to track Musk’s rapid and opaque government takeover.
Americans loosing control in real life: it’s more than a thousand miles away and would take at least 15 hours of continuous driving to get there. I can’t afford to skip work, and they’ve gotten worse since the time they beat and shot rubber bullets at peaceful protestors in a park for a photoshoot, so they might actually just shoot us and I don’t want to die. If I’m arrested it will ruin my life: I may never be able to get a job that pays enough, or provides healthcare. Given how many voted for and presumably want this, I’ve lost faith in my fellow citizens and neighbors ability to even see the problem, to say nothing of doing anything. Nothing like this has ever happened in our countries history, so we don’t have any framework for a nationwide protest, when it should happen, how we know it’s happening or even what we do. Do I middle school dance this thing and go awkwardly throw a Molotov cocktail at a Denny’s to break the ice and get everyone out there?
I want to say we’re scared, and we don’t know what we should do, or even what we can do. But the reality is, I don’t know how big that “we” actually is, because so very many of us are also worried that we’re deeply in the minority, and have no faith that our neighbors would stand with us if we tried to do anything.
To add: we legitimately need a French guide to what to do in times like this. They seem to light it up every few years over stuff like “cost of college rose to $50 a semester” or “retirement age rose to still younger than the US age, and still with actual benefits”.
I was posting this elsewhere recently but people massively underestimate how the US’s size factors into this. You can drive 10 hours from some parts of Texas and still be in Texas. The amount of money it would take to assemble all of us willing to protest in locations that would actually matter is incredible, and protesting in small town Kentucky won’t do much for you. We flat out cannot get the whole country together. I’m like 9 hours away from the capitol and I am closer than 80% of the country to the capitol.
Then take up the French model and protest, protest often and whenever, wherever you can … do not cooperate and protest at your own small level everywhere you can safely. And contact your representatives and tell them what you think, as often as possible.
That safely bit is what keeps me from it. I need to feed my family. My work can fire me for whatever reason. Even a whiff of “you were at a protest” gets very close attention, then position made redundant.
As an Indigenous Canadian, I’ve always lived on the fringes of being able to lose everything I have all my life. I get funding for this during one election cycle, then lose it the next, then get it back the next only to be completely abandoned and left on my own in the next election. I have it to the point of my life that I just live relying on myself and my wife at this point. We don’t own much and what we do own we have not debt over. I own a modest house, used vehicles and have no debt on anything … because I know that any given year, I might end up with little or nothing.
So I always feel free to protest and protest as much as I safely can and join movements, groups and political parties that try to do stuff. I have nothing to lose because I was never ever really given anything to lose in the first place.
I’m aware the historical treatment of indigenous Canadians has been “not great”, to say the least, so take that awareness into context with what I say.
From what you describe, you have so much more to lose than so many Americans, who would be entirely ruined if something went “off” at a protest. You have a house, a car, a family and no debt. You’re in Canada so you get healthcare.
Going to a protest, a cop can hit you in the arm with a stick, break it, charge you with resisting arrest, incitement to violence, and terroristic threats. If you fight the charges you will almost certainly lose, spend a decade in prison and lose everything. You will instead plead guilty to resisting arrest and assault, do a few months in jail and a few years on probation, and only loose your job, and possibly your house and car.
Hopefully your injury set correctly, because you will not be able to afford to have it corrected or physical therapy. A disability claim can be rejected because there are jobs that you can do one handed.
Even just something as simple as your employer finding out you went can lead to termination.
All this is routine and tolerable to fight injustice if you know people have your back. If it’s bitterly cold, far away, and you don’t know that you’re not alone, it can be really hard to justify. Particularly if you have legitimate reason to believe that you might be met with particularly brutal suppression, both legal and physical, because they’ve made a point about how they should have been more brutal last time, removed the people who might say no, and encouraged their followers who have a history of violence against protestors.
My point, for all that, is that it’s a time of uncertainty and confusion. Would you be getting shot with rubber bullets for freedom and the continuation of the country, or for the continued timely disbursement of treasury funds as congressionally dictated? Is it nationwide and halting the country, or is it you and six other people in the median of a muddy road holding up poster board and being threatened by passerby? (That’s how it was when I went to the Mueller firing protests)
At least in my case, it’s not “it can’t be that bad”, but “how bad is it”, “can it be recovered”, and “can it be resisted”. I’ll be entirely honest: I’m quite the fan of this country, but I like my life and family more, and I’m honest enough to know the limits of my bravery and patriotism.
I feel like it has to be a very “American” solution, annoyingly. Like, reconfigure your W4 to the minimum amount of withholding without getting in legal trouble. Pay the bare minimum on student loans and miss payments for a few months if you don’t mind the credit ding. Buy nothing except your bare minimum to survive/provide for your family. Create an action hedge fund where everyone tosses in $20 that is crowd-sourced to start shorting stocks that affect the oligarchs the most and its entire mission is to fuck up the stock market. Stop using mainstream social medias so the oligarchs have a harder time mass-surveilling, stop paying for monthly entertainment services, find the cheapest cell phone plan you can find, use your old phone a bit longer and don’t buy a new one. Avoid buying any new “consumer goods” that aren’t completely necessary. Find ways to carpool and reduce the amount of fuel you’re using. Cancel Amazon Prime. Cancel subscriptions to sub-par media like Washington Post and NY Times.
Oh, and that money saved? Save it, save it all, kill outstanding debts, they hate it when debts are paid off. Pay off the student loan, the mortgage, the credit card. Or just save a pile of fuck you money so when things do get darker, you at least have enough money to float for a few months without a job.
Basically, collectively reduce our “economic footprint” with some fun horse bet manipulation of their precious stock market while saving up for a nationwide strike. You’re still shopping at your local stores and supporting local workers. Day to day doesn’t change too much, you just have a little less. However that works out for each individual.
Unfortunately, this approach takes coordination on a large level, but it would also collectively impact citizens’ direct lives the least to avoid the, “lost my job and my insurance went away with it and I now need $3000 a month for medications,” problem, while affecting the oligarchs’ precious stocks from multiple attack vectors.
I am already doing like, 50% of your suggestions, just to survive.
Also, the fascist plutocrats own pretty much all of not only the traditional media, but also the digital “town square” and will absolutely censor even the slightest whiff of organization to resist them.