You can absolutely submit screenshots of text conversations as evidence in court. I’ve literally done this myself.

Someone could challenge the veracity of the evidence if they wanted to, at which point you might want to prove that they hadn’t been edited by doing something like showing the copies that are actually on your phone. But you can absolutely submit screenshots.

I may at some point. It’s one of my backup plans. I do like the area I live in, though. It’s thankfully one of the better states. Maybe we’ll secede and join you! :D

We definitely won the election. Canadian authoritarianism would have just made things worse. And at least we still have somewhere to go north of the border.

They have a damn good reason to want to impeach him. He’s threatening the economy and the remainder of our relevance internationally. The Republicans have to live here too. If he yanks down all the load-bearing structures in our house, it’s going to collapse on them too.

I mean, step one is not turning the entire opposition into defeatists via constant steeping in negativity and hopelessness. We need to get our energy up and keep it there so we can actually get some traction. We have to believe that we have a chance to change something before we can actually work up the gumption to do it.

That won’t happen if half the left is busy telling the other half we’re cooked. It certainly won’t happen if they convince more of us to become defeatists or to try to take our ball and go home as if our homes aren’t literally in the country in question.

I would be surprised if it got that much support, but that’s not the point. The vibes on Lemmy are absolutely terrible and actively cultivating helplessness. There are so many people here who immediately decided we’re all cooked and spend their time trying to demotivate people and push any resistance to admit defeat that it’s absurd. That’s not how you push back, it’s not how you make things better, and it’s literally the kind of shitty helpless attitude that got us into this mess.

Something isn’t right? Don’t take active steps to try to fix it or give your support to anyone who is. Stand on the sidelines preaching this loser shit. We’re all doomed and there’s no point fighting. Don’t run new candidates, just refuse to vote. Don’t create networks of support, tear each other down. Don’t for a second allow a glimmer of hope to go unopposed.

Seriously, how can anyone ever be expected to accomplish anything with that kind of attitude?

I’m honestly starting to think this platform is just as toxic as Reddit or Facebook have ever been, without the help of any shady manipulative algorithm.

Despite the defeatist angles that are constantly posted on Lemmy, this is not what I’m seeing from actually reading the news.

Congress could literally be voting to impeach with 90% of the house and senate in support and y’all would still be banging on about how nothing will ever happen. I’m over it.

🤞

I think there’s a good chance. He’s shown both parties that the result of him being able to do whatever he wants unchecked will be the crumbling of our alliances and our economy and the steady erosion of all the good things about our country. Even conservatives can see the damage he’s doing.

If there were an election today he wouldn’t even come close to winning. Hopefully those who are responsible for his potential impeachment see that if they allow this to continue they won’t have a shot in their next elections either.

It’s one thing when everybody quits Starbucks. It’s another when everybody who might do the right thing resigns from all the positions of power.

It’s strange the way resigning seems to be treated as some sort of protest in and of itself. It’s not. It’s giving up. Protest would be refusing to resign, refusing to obey orders, and delegitimizating the people giving those orders.

Resigning just makes it easier for someone less principled to come along and do the job.

How can someone be guilty of acting as an agent of China but not guilty of conspiring to act as a foreign agent? 🤔

Too low. I should not be able to personally afford a whole ass ton of excess greenhouse gasses for the same price as my car insurance.

I’m sorry, but who the hell quotes stuttering verbatim?

When I say bot farms I don’t mean literal LLMs. I mean people hired or forced to work in a call-center type environment where their day is spent disseminating propaganda and sewing meaningless conflict. Often using multiple sockpuppets. Some are working for hostile governments, some are working for companies. They try to sway elections and influence public opinion to strengthen their allies and weaken their enemies. They’re all over the place.

I mean, honestly, they make it incredibly obvious. The idea that we somehow can’t tell is just a tactic they use. We can both smell it on them. Why pretend we can’t?

I’ve been saying this for months and I’ll keep saying it. These people aren’t genuine users. They’re a combination of bot-farm workers and useful idiots. There’s a reason their perspectives don’t reflect those of actual human beings that we meet and talk to out in the world. Because they’re literally just hired to demotivate us.

I trust the content I see on Beehaw and Lemmy in general less and less as the months go by, because it’s inundated with this shit to the point that it’s clearly being targeted to demotivate any resistance. It’s literally flooded with messaging designed to make us feel hopeless and helpless.

Thank you for this. There has been far too much of people utterly ignoring the hard work that people have done against authoritarianism in the US and the actual impact it’s had. Lemmy seems to be inundated with people insisting that nothing anyone can do could possibly help and the no one has ever done anything meaningful to resist, and that’s just bullshit. It’s some terminally online doomerism and it’s the last thing we need.

Frankly, it’s complicity. It needs to be called out and opposed, and you’re doing good work by not mincing words here.

People who pull this shit day in and day out are as much a part of the problem as the MAGA idiots, both in their constant attempts to undermine any and all resistance and very likely in getting us into this situation in the first place.

We need to stop tiptoeing around them and throw their bullshit back in their faces. It’s fucking shameful, and they should be embarrassed to be such spineless bootlickers.

That’s quite possible. This administration has shown that it doesn’t care about the rule of law. However, that’s a far sight from the justice system bending over and letting them.

It’s important to be precise about what’s happening right now and not to give up and admit defeat. There’s a world of difference between “this is bad, we have work to do” and “we’re absolutely cooked and have zero hope”. Trump’s administration wants you to give up. They want you to decide the fight is over before it’s even properly begun. Don’t do them the favor of making it easy.

That is also bad, but it’s a ruling on another aspect of the issue. They ruled that the Alien Enemies Act can be used against supposed Venezuelan gang members, but they also ruled that anyone being accused of this has to be informed ahead of time and have an opportunity to contest it. It does not say that those deported in a so-called administrative error can just be left in a foreign prison because oopsies.

The ACLU even referred to the ruling as a victory.

“We are disappointed that we will need to start the court process over again in a different venue, but the critical point is that the Court rejected the government’s remarkable position that it does not even have to give individuals meaningful advance notice to challenge their removal under the Alien Enemies Act. That is a big victory,” the ACLU’s Lee Gelernt said in a texted statement.

So again, it’s not really what you’re construing it as. It would be better if they’d decided that the deportations were entirely illegal, but this also definitely isn’t permission for the administration to deport anyone they want with no due process.

Do you have a source for this claim? Because that’s not what your link says at all.