I think trading your trombone lessons for puppet making is cool. I traded a giant turnip and a jar of pickled beets for some of my neighbour’s candied ginger last week.

Since you asked for ideas about organizing and what your fabulous ‘microscopic beans’ group might get up to:

Maybe talk to your community of regulars about being willing to mobilize in some way. Like, who wants basic disaster training. Maybe one of you knows first aid and can teach the rest. Those community meals you have could turn into bringing food to war refugees or families of stolen migrant workers out every Monday morning at the embassy (or wherever they protest regularly in your area). You can make one of your meetings about media literacy, and spotting propaganda, or if you’re all already savvy, you could create a fabulous Introduction to Propaganda Techniques performance and bring it to a mall or public square.

Poster/sticker campaigns telling people which media are Feeding them nazi shit are really helpful atm. No idea what your jam session might make out of an action like that, but artists jailbreak people’s programming in nifty ways no one expects. You could have everyone learn Jesse Welles’ War Isn’t Murder song and flash mob it somewhere.

Also, and this is where I know NOTHING about you, so apologies if it’s too personal or presumptuous.

I remember the G20 up here in Toronto really well. I remember them putting up those barricades all over downtown, telling locals not to go outside in our own neighbourhoods, them rounding up people the nights before protests, getting kettled and on. That shit is absolutely traumatizing, and you’re right: all bets are off when it comes to safety at protests where you are. Your safety is solely in the hands of the protester next to you, as theirs is in yours, just like always. My advice is to ask your group if anyone else feels traumatized by past protests in a similar way. Maybe the number is higher than you think. Maybe they want to talk about like, feelings and stuff. Maybe you can make something out of that (tactics, actions), or maybe it’s just a conversation. Either way, win-win.

“Damn Harris running for President did this! Dems really need to get back to their working class roots!” - MAGA, 2026

It’s the groove. And it’s in the heart.

TIL - Elon’s maternal grandpappy (born Yankee, raised Canuk, moved to South Africa for the apartheid in 1940) was a chiropractor. He and Palmer were good pals, and he graduated from Palmer’s school in Iowa in the 1920s. Went on to create and put himself in charge of a bunch of chiropractic regulatory bodies.

All the racist and nation-destabilizing shit he tried to accomplish through political appointment (of himself, ofc) failed. Last thing he published afaik was an anti-vax, anti-fluoride “it’s an international conspiracy of teh jews” diatribe.

[edit for wiki link]

Spot on. Waiting for their favourite influencer, pastor, etc to tell them to believe something else.

In theatre it’s called “suspension of disbelief.” You know what’s happening on stage isn’t really happening, but you agree to just go with it and exist in the show’s reality for an hour or so. Not meant to be a permanent state of consciousness.

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An MP I really admire in Ontario is pushing for Elections Canada to protect our electoral process from the Grand Twit’s interference, so that’s something. I’d prefer a ban.

Even though the Proud crowd are big operators in Canada, banning Yankee social media would maybe help lower the ragebait volume a bit. Whatever makes a dent.

ty for this post. Looks like a well-trod ground for most people here, but for newcomers like me the whole conversation was really enlightening and TIL.

You made me think of my buddy from the states visiting me in Toronto 2010-ish laughing at the Canadian flags they sometimes saw flying from people’s houses and other buildings. I asked her what struck her so funny about them and she blanked for a second. She said, “It’s just weird seeing so many flags that aren’t American… Like, this is a country too… um.” We had a brilliant talk about flag-waving patriots for a bit, but seeing that glitch was really interesting and I’ve never forgotten it.

That said, I had plenty of teachers growing up and know tonnes of educators now who’d totally be into forcing students to salute the Canadian flag and pledge allegiance to their God & Country every morning. The only thing stopping them is legislation preventing it, not national identity.

To expand on this.

Canadians are Americans. Mexicans are Americans. Peruvians are Americans. Yankees (or USofAvians) are Americans too. They’re just the only country with a self-appellation claiming to represent two whole continents worth of people (when most of them probably can’t name all the countries in America without a quick gander at google maps).

Thanks for asking this btw. Just found it with a quick search wondering the same thing after reading yet another comment section (this one about Trump, Musk and JD Vance) that turned into 50% whinging about .world mods/admin and horrible reddit users turning their lemmy into a shithole. The answers you got here were really helpful for me to understand a bit more about the context/history of these spaces.

Same. I still choose to believe that not using Google as a verb makes a dent in the behemoth. Usually gets a curious reply like “what, like Bing?”

jfc I’d forgotten that moment. Let us never forget the Bowling Green Massacre.

Burning the witches is WAY more important than who tells them they’re allowed to burn the witches.

When they lose their “imperfect messenger from God” they’ll just follow who their pastors tell them to follow. Maybe they’ll change the name to the Trump Party and any nazi Christian soldier can lead it. Bible-banger Vance is lined up as the successor atm, but who knows? Could be Desantis. Could be Bannon. Anyone tapped who’s willing to act out that vindictive certainty, solidarity and ferocity that Trump performs so well can do the job for them.

Maybe one of his kids. If the fundie leaders want to be truly perverse (and we know they do), they’ll choose Ivanka and call it feminism.

source: grew up in a bog-standard xtian cult village in North America. I know these Good Folk, and the Sharia Law-type plans they have for women. The death of Grab-Her-By-The-Pussy will just be a chance to deify him further.

It’s giving Onward Christian toddlers