Minimizing railroad crossings is absolutely something that should be taken into account while designing transportation infrastructure, but the existence of railroad crossings doesn’t make a transportation network impractical.

Compare it to free speech. Saying you don’t need privacy because you have nothing to hide is like saying you don’t need free speech because you have nothing to say. Eventually, through no fault of your own, there will come a time when you have something worth saying or hiding, and you will regret having surrendered your right to do so.

Another way to put it is: I don’t need privacy because my judgment and intentions are shady, but because the authorities’ judgment and intentions are, or one day will be. Allowing the authorities to invade your privacy and suppress your speech diminishes your ability to hold them accountable.

¿Por que no los dos?

The best transportation system is a mixed transportation system, though I agree cars should only make up a tiny fraction of it.

I’ve looked through the whole thread again and I don’t know where you’re getting the idea anyone’s accusing tankies of being sellouts. Best I can guess is that you misinterpreted the comment immediately above yours as saying tankies are secretly supporting the current fascist regime, is that it?

That’s not what they’re saying, they meant that tankies (I would clarify that it’s the chronically online tankies that are like this) want other people to fight the revolution for them, and won’t lift a single finger themselves until they can be sure that victory is inevitable. This is because they see themselves as the vanguard that tells everyone else what to do and how to do it, and will be put in charge after the revolution. That’s why people call them red fascists (though I don’t like that term myself as I don’t think they should be conflated with actual fascists, it hinders understanding), they want to be in the fascists’ place so they can use the systems of power and control that they built towards a different end (changing the economic system).

A previous person I talked to on lemmy.ml not long ago illustrated this mindset well, saying that authoritarianism is only a buzzword made up by the west to demonize their enemies, that it’s just people exercising power, and that it’s good when communists do it. Here’s what I see wrong with this: the tools of a fascist state are purpose-built for oppression, and trying to use them for anything else is futile. You will be corrupted by their power. We should not be trying to take and use these tools, but dismantling them and creating our own which are purpose-built for liberation.

They don’t like electoralism, prefer to LARP revolution while doing nothing to actually lay the groundwork for one.

He lived in a very large clay jar, which is actually not that uncommon in the Roman empire during the time that he lived. Almost everyone in the metropolitan areas of the Roman empire owned at least one such jar, and so homeless people would live in them in much the same way homeless people today might live in their cars or a tent. The reason it’s significant that Diogenes lived in one is that he did so by choice, as he had the wealth and social status to live quite comfortably if he wanted to.

Their concern about optics is the reason they want agents to stop shooting white people.

To consolidate power. As ineffectual as the Democrats are they remain a barrier to Trump and his backers’ autocratic ambitions. He wants his coalition to stay in power more or less indefinitely, and to do that he needs to take control of state and local elections. That’s why he’s targeting blue states like MN and demanding voter rolls. He will make baseless claims of voter fraud and use that as justification to throw out votes, allowing Republicans to win a state that has voted Democrat every election since 1976.

He doesn’t necessarily want a civil war, he wants an excuse to bring the boot of the US military down on his political enemies to suppress their vote and he isn’t expecting a fair fight, he expects people to roll over and surrender.

The Trump administration is sending increasing numbers of ICE agents - many of whom are untrained new recruits while the DHS makes recruitment ads targeting white supremacists - into Minneapolis and having them raid schools, churches, workplaces, and homes without warrants to arrest people based on things like the color of their skin, accents, and perceived political leanings (in addition to snatching people directly off the street or their vehicles). The community in Minneapolis has responded by organizing neighborhood watches that coordinate to track the location of ICE agents and warn people of their approach (often by blowing whistles), while also showing up to film them. Many are sheltering immigrant families in their homes to protect them from ICE. Local officials have been urging Minnesotans to stay peaceful while ICE and DHS have been using increasingly aggressive tactics, and several people have already been shot and killed by ICE agents, which the Trump administration has been lying about despite there being video with multiple angles of the incidents.

People - including state and local officials - have speculated that Trump is attempting to provoke a violent backlash to use as justification for invoking the insurrection act, which would allow Trump to send in the military (of which he has already put troops on standby) and put the state under direct federal control. As a result they are continuing to urge people to remain peaceful even as ICE agents are becoming increasingly violent. There is also a leaked letter that Pam Bondi (US Attorney General) sent to Tim Walz (Governor of Minnesota) offering to consider pulling ICE out of the state in exchange for repealing sanctuary policies as well as turning over the state’s voter rolls and social welfare records.

Short answer: The administration is trying to start a civil war, the state is trying not to give them what they want, and the people are becoming increasingly organized. This is the closest we have been to civil war since, well, the lead-up to the first one, but if it were to break out today it would look very different (probably more like a larger scale version of Ireland’s ‘troubles’).

I am in a group with my prog-lib neighbors doing the same thing. Anarchists have always put themselves on the frontlines, and I’m grateful to have a bunch of prog-libs join me now.

If you want these people out why would you cheer for such an obviously horrifically mismanaged clusterfuck? Ugh.

Because they’re too stupid/brainwashed to understand how much of a clusterfuck ICE is. You really expect someone who thinks Trump is a genius to think through the logistics of mass deportation? Racists are emotionally dysregulated; any powers of analytical reasoning are dominated by visceral fear and revulsion that overpowers everything else.

There have already been whistleblowers.

Not the ones on slrpnk.net. I sometimes go to their spaces, usually to argue, sometimes to commiserate on points of agreement, but authoritarianism is absolutely unwelcome on slrpnk.net. That’s a good thing about the fediverse, that it allows people to cultivate protected spaces while still allowing interaction with those outside of them, but always on your own terms.

Now there’s plenty of self-described anarchists that hang out with the tankies on .ml and hexbear, but those are usually people who have either been tankies themselves and are deconstructing or they are non-committal anarchists on the path to becoming tankies.

Neoliberals: The people can’t be trusted to know what’s best for them, so we need a professional-managerial class to make decisions. Don’t worry, we’ll let people elect them, but it’ll be on our terms and we will control the narrative. It’s meritocratic!

Tankies: The workers can’t be trusted to know what’s best for them, so we need a bureaucracy comprised of intelligentsia to guide the way to communism. Don’t worry, only true proletarians will be allowed into our bureaucracy, and workers can organize themselves so long as it’s on our terms. And don’t you dare call it a class!

Anarchists: The people have a basic right to self-determination and power should be distributed as equitably as possible between all people so they can make their own decisions, good or bad. People can and should organize themselves in a variety of ways on their own terms so long as they do not subjugate others, as hierarchies at scale form the basis of class society.

Neoliberals and Tankies (in unison): Stupid naive anarkiddie, don’t you know people need their betters to tell them what to do! Stick with what actually works and keep your dumb ideas of autonomy and free association to yourself (hides evidence of countless atrocities behind their backs).

This isn’t a protest, it’s a state-wide general strike, and it’ll be the first one to happen in the US in 80 years. Labor power has been diminished and defanged here for decades, but people are relearning how to fight. It’ll likely please you that the Black Panthers have reformed, armed themselves, and are guarding protestors and community members in some areas as well (which is what the 2nd amendment is actually supposed to be for; local militias).

It’s the difference between defense and vengeance. In Transformers One they had already defeated the big bad and had the support of the other transformers, so killing him then was an unnecessary act of revenge. It’s different when you’re still fighting and the big bad’s death could make a difference in the outcome.

Cooperatives, mutual aid networks like Food Not Bombs, rank-and-file/leaderless unions like the IWW, etc. There is a limited number of modern day examples because such organizations have historically faced systematic repression, but the list grows much longer if we look to the past. Such organization also tends to form spontaneously during natural disasters and the like when there is little to no state intervention, and quickly dissolve whenever the state intervenes.

For organizations with broader scope and on longer timescales, the Zapatistas in Chiapas, Mexico and Rojava in north and east Syria are good examples.

Keep in mind of course that the real world is messy and full of conflict, and that results in there not being any perfectly pure example of anarchist ideals in practice in the same way that there is no perfectly pure example of any ideology in practice. In addition, many of the groups I listed above do not make explicit reference to anarchism and are doing their own thing that just so happens to map onto anarchist ideas, and they often don’t call themselves anarchist or even have an aversion to ideological labels entirely.

The places in the US that are safer for minorities are also the first places that will be targeted for Trump’s domestic military occupation. If you’re trans and paying attention to how things are playing out, those are the places you go to seek solidarity and fight, not to flee and seek asylum.

If you say “capitalism sucks”, you are going to get reactionary thought and action. You have to say things in a way to engage their experience and understanding without tripping the propagandized brain worms.

Extending your metaphor, this is what your average American’s brain looks like. There is a lot of propaganda and social conditioning working against you here.

I’m half expecting Peter Thiel to say “maybe we should build a bunch of fallout shelters and then initiate a nuclear holocaust so we can outlast all our enemies, and also run some experiments while we’re at it” in an interview tomorrow, wearing a vault suit and giving a thumbs up.