I have a close friend who is a disabled vet who is politically active in Northern MI. We have talked a lot of about free speech and social media. He has several handicaps and relies on social security disability insurance to live. He barely gets by and his full time job is dealing with the paperwork and hoops to jump through to keep himself eligible for the care and assistance he needs to keep alive.
We talked through some things and he has purged his social media of all anti Trump posts. He thinks that they could use AI to analyze the social media posts of people receiving food assistance and cancel the assistance for ones who are not pro Trump. And I can't really say I disagree with him, I could see them doing this. And once you lose food assistance, many of the other things you need are also canceled.
So that's where we are, we are no longer a free country and people are starting to realize it and acting to protect themselves. Here's a guy, who served in the US Navy and fought in Desert Storm who is afraid to voice his opinions on social media for fear of retribution. The retribution could cost him his life. These are the decisions millions of people are starting to assess.
And a lot of people will say, "Screw em, I won't give up my freedoms!" But it's not as easy to do when your very existence is tied to getting assistance from the government. For most people, fascism is just something you go into survival mode when faced with.
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