Yeah, I kinda was feeling the same way. I also do the numbering and bullet points thing too bc it helps me organize what I’m trying to say as I type, and I prefer it in general when I read longer walls of text bc it helps me stay focused.

Reddit and most of the internet has definitely become just one big hub for advertising, but it’s also led to some cases where I’ve genuinely been left unable to tell If I was talking with a bot, a troll, or even just a human without an agenda who was making an argument in a bot/troll like way to prove their point.

There used to be times where I would start typing something like “what are you 15?” then realize, yeah they probably are 15 so why tf are you arguing with this person? Time to log off.

Now it’s like a possibility of: 15 year old/edeglord, a troll farm paid by a foreign government/ or possibly even my own government, advanced bot, or someone who just has a similar style of writing.

There have definitely been times where it’s left me thinking way too much about the deeper meaning of being human, and the question of free will. That is usually my cue these days that it’s time to log off and touch grass.

Louisiana is full of mainly conservative leaning individuals who usually just don’t vote until they get angry enough/fed up with corruption.

Idk if you’ve heard of Bobby Jindal? But he was a Republican Governor corrupt enough to get the state to vote for a Democrat for the next 8 years. That’s part of why we’re one of the few red states with a Medicaid expansion.

We’re the second most dependent state in the country on Medicaid, and the House Speaker, Mike Johnson of Louisiana, was encouraging cuts to Medicaid in order to pay for a tax cut to the wealthy.

Right now people are very pissed. They need to be kept informed of what’s actually going on so they stay pissed and keep putting pressure on these people.

I mean, just surprising to have one post removed from a state subreddit for being off topic then result in a total ban? Wtf is that?

Good reading skillz

True, but not sure what the alternative is. Pretend it’s not happening until that’s all that’s left in the world, and everything is destroyed? Or try to make as much noise as you can to warn other people until they silence you?

Honestly, talking to people about this stuff helps me kind of think about a lot of things. Really, thinking about it, that’s all the Heritage Foundation really did except all the warnings were false and made up.

They just kept sqwauking and convinced people of their BS. If they could write their crazy ass manifesto why not just try to present as many people as possible with facts countering that argument. It will definitely take decades to reverse this shit, but it also took them decades to finally gain the power they have now.

Sorry, don’t mean to rant like a crazy person, but these fuckers have just about driven me to that point.

I don’t plan to leave if I can avoid it. I love New Orleans and most of the people here for better or worse. When I moved here, even the conservative Catholics seemed laid back compared to the southern Baptist bullshit I grew up with in TN.

Honestly at this point I blame the Heritage Foundation for just about every fucking problem in this country. It basically began with their mandate for leadership they delivered to Ronald Reagan. Instead of saying wtf is this horse shit, he said, sounds great. Let’s make it happen. Now here we are and they are finally in a position to make their dreams come true with project 2025. They want the entire world to look like what I grew up in and what I couldn’t get away from fast enough. They don’t give a shit about any of the ideology. It’s about control and power.

Keep people divided, make shit so bad in places like Louisiana it drives away anyone that votes against them or stands in their way. It leaves only the extremely wealthy controlling all the resources and the extremely poor completely relying on them. The poor will keep voting them into power based on whatever they can use to in-group (race baiting) or whatever scraps of hope they dangle in front of them (jobs and the economy) with no intention of ever allowing social mobility or fixing anything. There’s a reason they’re destroying the economy. They do much better when it’s broken.

I also feel at this point there’s really nowhere to run where they won’t also eventually take over. These state policy networks exist in all 50 states and Europe. They have way too much power and it’s no different than any dictator. They use Heritage Foundation money to push for the same policies they’ve already purchased at a federal level, and disguise it as representing the people of the state. They will take and take until there’s nothing left.

We can run until there’s nowhere left to hide, or we can try to push back. I know not everyone agrees, but even if we lose, why make it easy on them? If they didn’t care about shit being exposed at this point, there’d be no reason for them to try to keep the information suppressed and hidden, so fuck them.

In Louisiana, our current Governor snuck in a new section to a recent renewal of the former Governor’s executive order declaring a state of emergency to handle cyber security.

The new section granted the director of the Governor’s Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness (GOHSEP) authority to act as he sees fit to handle the emergency.

What makes that especially concerning is that the same day, he placed all of GHOSEP under the command of the Louisiana National Guard, gave the director of GHOSEP a new title, and named a member of the guard interim director.

I think we might have TX beat, but our state’s Heritage Foundation/SPN affiliate think tank is actually trying to argue we should be trying to be more like TX. Fun times. It’s like every day I learn some outrageous new bullshit that makes me more angry than the day before.

Here is a video they made describing their brilliant idea

The CEO/president of GNO Inc that speaks throughout the video was also chosen by our Governor to be the official “Superbowl Czar” which has got to be the dumbest fucking title you could ever waste money on.

But I guess I can’t complain too much bc Landry might have me shot by the National Guard things could always be worse I guess.

You should, it’s a really interesting post. Still available here:

https://apnews.com/article/leaks-pentagon-polygraph-trump-investigation-685b08e14d813050a722cec89eb5c323

Sorry wrong link, here is the reddit post https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/1jsp8d5/us_active_duty_or_reserve_military_have_you_given/

You can still read the original post here

He was saying many Russian soldiers that have been captured have said they weren’t aware they were actually supposed to be fighting in a war, and had been told what they were doing was a military exercise. So it’s possible in some cases that even if a soldier is given an order, they may not realize the extent of consequences of following it.

Thanks for posting that. I appreciate what she’s saying and I would like to think that is what would happen, however, chaotic situations lead to very unpredictable outcomes. When you have chaos, an angry mob of people, and armed soldiers being told their job is to keep things under control, you’re putting a lot of faith in the individual good vs group think mentality that tends to be a sad aspect of human nature.

1. Especially given that you have corrupt governors pushing federal policy at the state level, there is a very good chance you will have the national guard called in to handle dissent. I’m watching my own governor abuse his power and grant some very questionable authority to the guard already. Kent State is a really good example of why this should be very scary. It’s not “fear mongering” to make sure people are aware of overlaps between fairly recent U.S. history and the current reality.

2. I do know there are soldiers who truly would refuse an illegal order, but I think it’s naive to rely on that when it comes to what we’re seeing now. Especially considering the goal of this administration is to deconstruct and tear down everything they dislike about the current U.S. system.

As someone pointed out, Hegseth is now in charge of the military and seems to be doing everything he can to root out opposition to the administration. He’s setting a tone for what is to be expected of anyone not following orders. Apparently ignoring the whole incident where he ended up texting war plans in a group chat on signal where a journalist somehow got added, the Pentagon has also started threatening department of defense employees with polygraphs in order to determine who is leaking information to the press. They actually sent this memo out threatening employees late on Friday night and news of Hegseth accidentally leaking sensitive information broke on Monday.

Soldiers get issued an RoE card. The card specifies the procedure for Escalation of Force. Usually it’s “Verbal Warning, Show of Force, Warning Shot, Lethal Force” with the option to skip steps in case of self-defence.

However, soldiers sometimes still do illegal and immoral thing time while deployed in other countries. Sometimes because they’ve been ordered to, and sometimes because they choose to. Is that representative of the entire U.S. or the military? No, but it definitely happens way too frequently.

3. There are a lot of comments from military members in the original post. A retired member of the army commented this. It’s in the 3rd screenshot of the pictures, and the original post is gone from the subreddit but still available to view here if you want to look over it:

by the time “effect martial law on [insert US city] and summarily execute anyone who does not comply” makes it’s way to the commander of a maneuver company, it is formatted in an operations order in a way that is devoid of any subjectivity. orders are distilled to a rigidly-formatted set of instructions that almost anyone in the formation are able to understand and carry out.

the reason for this is so the people who carry out the orders don’t hesitate and don’t contemplate the wider meaning. an infantry platoon’'s task won’t be to effect martial law; it will be “seize and hold objective [whatever] (could be a street intersection, train station, etc) by 1700 hrs”

Again, I believe at the individual level, most people would choose to do the right thing, but we’ve seen over and over again, that especially in times of panic and chaos, frontal lobes go offline, lizard brain takes over, and herd mentality kicks in as a defense mechanism.