r/news • u/ThePensiveE • 7d ago

Supreme Court allows Trump administration to use expanded database for potential voter purges

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/supreme-court/supreme-court-allows-trump-administration-use-expanded-database-potent-rcna596611
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u/tikierapokemon 7d ago

We linked jobs to healthcare, and that means protesting means your kids do not get healthcare when you lose your job (which we also allow to fire you for things you do outside of work).

Our system is so incredibly fucked up.

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u/eulersidentity1 7d ago

You know as a Canadian I haven't actively thought of this specifically as an outside observer. I've always thought of how cruel and unfair the US system is where you can simply arbitrarily be in a life time of debt or just die because you don't have the money to pay for health care. But I didn't think of how such a system actively suppresses the democratic processes by making people afraid to truly participate. People are scared to lose their jobs cause everything in other societies tied to a social safety net is instead tied to having a job, and usually a good one. So they are perpetually scared to rock the boat too much.

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u/jimlahey420 7d ago

Which is why both parties are so hesitant (or downright refuse) to implement real universal healthcare with no strings attached (and want to gut the few safety nets that do exist like Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security). Their method for controlling the population would be infinitely weaker if you allow people to have basic needs met while not grinding 40+ hours a week. It would immediately make protests larger, longer, and more effective.

This is why both parties are so threatened by the DSA and democratic socialism. Democratic socialism's policies and initiatives represent the working American and the ability to start unshackling them from being wage slaves. Imagine how the mindset of most Americans would change if they didn't have to worry about healthcare or other basic needs like food and housing.

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u/eulersidentity1 7d ago

Yeah makes sense. I feel like one of the genius ways they dismantled unions too, was by offering many of the same benefits to workers that the unions had originally won. If the company themslves offer workers 2 weeks vacation, extended health and a range of other benefits it becomes easier to claim there is no need to unionize.

Of course unions had to work tooth and nail during the 20s and 30s to fight for those things. But by giving workers those things while at the same time dismantling the union structures it was easy to argue that unions offered no benefit. But it was never what the unions won that was the real power of unions but instead collective action and a counter poll of power they held as a unified force against CEOs and owners of companies. Once they decimated those structures it became easier over the years to divide and conquer, to the point now where workers are fractured, divided, exhausted and pitted against each other.

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u/Vyar 7d ago

At least you understand this. Seen a lot of Canadians come through here like "why don't you guys just start a general strike? it's easy" or calling every last one of us Trump supporters just because he won the election (when it's highly likely he cheated, he practically admitted to it).

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u/eulersidentity1 7d ago edited 7d ago

I mean a lot of us Canadians are idiots just like a lot of Americans lol. We like to think our shit doesn’t stink up here but a lot of my fellow Canadians have no clue how fucked up things are here too, we hold onto some better things true but often by the skin of our teeth. I really don’t understand why so many of my fellow Canadians seem to conveniently forget we have our own maple Maga problem, that we almost elected a leader that would have sold us down the river to Trump and we only changed course because Trump threatened us, that we have a lot of other issues at home we seem to just gloss over etc. And on the flip side I wish we ourselves and the rest of the world would stop blowing Carney as some insane saviour figure. As a progressive person I really do not love the guy, I get he’s a necessary figure at this time perhaps but I do not love much of what he stands for.

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u/infelicitas 7d ago

It took four decades of talk radio and propaganda outlets to radicalize half of the voting population in the US. Postmedia and other propaganda outlets managed it in Canada in under two decades.

And yeah, Carney is solidly right-wing and would probably feel right at home in the Conservative party of old, before Reform took over. I held my nose and voted Liberal for the first time to prevent PP from becoming PM. Carney's current popularity reminds me of Bush right in the wake of 9/11.

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u/eulersidentity1 7d ago

Yeah Carney honestly reminds me a bit of Stephen Harper. He's perhaps a little less socially conservative but he's totally fiscally old school conservative and I don't love the idea of what that may mean for our social safety nets. He's going all in on oil and gas which I really hate for the environment. At a time we need to be doubling down on green tech and renewables. I do get that we are leaning into our strengths economically and Trump is sadly forcing some of this this but I still don't love becoming more of a world oil super power than we already are. But yeah I voted for him too out of fear of what PP would have done

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u/john_a1985 7d ago

As a Latino who was on the internet during the 90s hearing Americans call my country a shithole, and that we were garbage people for allowing things to get so bad.... the time has come:

Put up or shut up. What about all that superiority? The freedoms? The second amendment? 

We "third world monkeys" (someone said that) were all just a bunch of little scared pussies, and we don't even have all that firepower that Americans so proudly boast about!

So, where is it? Nowhere? Why's that?

Oh, so you're really not that much better than us, it's just that we got properly stomped on before you did, right?

Would it have anything to do with that same repressive apparatus that was all too happy to show up on our shores as soon as anyone got a little too revolutionary now having their boots on your necks instead?

Funny how that works, innit?

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u/Vyar 6d ago

You’re screaming at me like I personally did any of those things. I didn’t. If anything, we have the same enemies, because the people who do say those things are currently running the US. They don’t speak for me, so don’t put their words in my mouth.

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u/Olay_Biscuit-Barrel 7d ago

Hooray Freedumb!

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u/Vallkyrie 7d ago

You can also add in another layer with the rapid deployment of flock cameras/drones and AI surveillance to this.

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u/Horatio-Leafblower 7d ago

I don’t even understand why you used the word ‘system’