#us centric

So the National Park Service removed any mention of trans people from the page on the Stonewall National Monument. And removed the word 'transgender' from the page on Sylvia Rivera.

Hell no. Trans women of color built the gay rights movement. Full stop.

Do you live in our nation’s fair capital of Washington DC? If not, were you planning on traveling there this weekend to watch the annual Fourth of July festivities and fireworks on the National Mall? Great! Have fun! Take the usual precautions. Stay hydrated — the District’s heat and humidity in the summer are no joke! Don’t drink and drive. The crowds might be overwhelming, so be kind and patient with others. Particularly the public servants trying to keep things moving — they are giving up their holiday so you can enjoy yours!

Finally, wear a respirator at all times, as if you were spraying your house for termites or mining minerals on an asteroid. Wait, what?

Yes, wear a respirator. Because according to the Washington Post, the massive fireworks display is expected to produce so much air pollution that the National Park Service itself suggests — in internal documents because why actually warn the public of the danger — people “remain indoors as much as possible during and after the show.”

Apparently the levels of the type of particulate that’s the biggest concern are projected to be between about 60-120 TIMES the acceptable level, and those particulates could persist for three to six hours post finale. The National Park Service is recommending N95 masks while outdoors and the use of HEPA filters indoors.

A) The US does not have universal healthcare. Even with insurance, and especially before ACA, healthcare can be expensive, especially for unexpected injuries. If someone is injured by another person or a corporation, they're often saddled with medical bills in addition to the pain and lost income. Someone has to pay, and so a personal injury lawsuit is often the answer.

B) Corporations are very good at public image. When a person is injured by a corporation, said corporation invests a lot of resources to paint the injured party as irrational and greedy, because even though they have plenty of funds to settle, the last thing they want is to admit culpability in a public case. By painting USAmericans as obsessed with suing people over trivial matters, you are playing into corporate propaganda.

Yes, they do count in the United States; they are unsecured debt. You get a ding from the hard pull, and the age, payment history, and utilization % work just like normal credit cards.

Too often, Democracy is presented to us as the boring, moderate option, only chosen by conformists and the indecisive masses. I am here to tell you:

Democracy is not Moderate. Democracy is Radical.

Democracy is the last major political ideology to insist that legitimacy rises from the many and not the few.

Every other system - no matter how it dresses itself up - rests on the same grim foundation: that power must be concentrated in the hands of a tiny elite. Sometimes it is in the hands of The Party's Politburo, sometimes it's the Guardian Mullahs, sometimes a Noble Bloodline, sometimes it's the President-for-Life and his pathetic cadre of sycophants.

It doesn't matter what ideology props up Tyranny. The labels differ, but the structure is identical - a small group decides, and the rest of us obey. Strip away the slogans and you find the same contempt underneath: a profound distrust of humanity as a whole.

And that is how it has always been - in most places, and for most of human history. But Democracy is the rejection of that structure at its root.

Democracy is not tidy. It is not efficient. It is not comforting. It is a stubborn, defiant insistence that ordinary people - in all their conflicted ignorance, prejudice, generosity, and brilliance - are entitled to govern themselves. Not because they are perfect, but because they are human.

It assumes that the people are not livestock to be managed, nor children to be shielded from dangerous thoughts, but moral agents capable of judgment, disagreement, and correction.

There is nothing moderate about that.

And that is why Democracy and Freedom of Expression are inseparable. A system that depends on the people’s consent must allow the people to speak - to argue, to offend, to be wrong, to be foolish, to be alarming. Either you trust the people or you do not.

Democracy cannot survive on curated truths and sanitized discourse. It requires exposure to bad ideas so that better ones can defeat them in the open. It requires citizens who can hear something repulsive and reject it for themselves.

Authoritarian systems have no need for Freedom of Expression. They do not require educated citizens, only compliant ones. They do not need critical thinking, only discipline. Speech is dangerous to them precisely because it invites comparison, skepticism, and refusal. So the Authoritarians of all colors regulate it - not for any public good, but for their own survival.

Here in America, Democracy is strained. The public sometimes chooses poorly. Demagogues rise. Falsehood spreads. But the system is showing its cracks precisely because it allows us to see them.

The answer to bad democratic outcomes is not to abandon democracy - it is to defend it more fiercely. A system that permits error is the only system that permits correction.

I know that the temptation, in moments of fear and frustration, is to reach for guardians - to wish for someone stronger, smarter, cleaner to take the wheel so that you do not have to confront it yourself. That temptation is ancient, but it has always led to the same place: The surrender of voice. The criminalization of dissent. The quiet suffocation of truth.

Democracy asks something harder of us. It asks us to believe that people, together, can learn - can improve. That exposure to ideas does not inevitably corrupt. That sunlight does more good than silence. That freedom - including the freedom to create and consume shocking, offensive, unsettling ideas - is not a threat to legitimacy, but its foundation.

Democracy is not easy and it is not perfect. Democracy rejects the fantasy that some flawless leader will come along to save us. It does not falsely promise us good outcomes every time.

The US and the UK aren't the only two countries with internet access. Stop accusing people of being British just because they don't use American English.

The US is also a former European colony. The primary victims of the colonisation by the British are Native Americans, not the European colonists who didn't want to pay taxes to the King. You aren't special.

Other countries are also cultural melting pots. Other countries have immigrants. The US having immigrants is not evidence of it's superiority over other countries, nor is the US inherently more diverse than other countries.

A lot of other countries (but not all countries) have their own indigenous peoples. Indigenous has never only referred to Native Americans.

AAPI is an American thing. Equivalent terms don't exist in the Pacific islands because Asians and Pacific Islanders have different experiences with racism.

The USD is not the only dollar. When you say something is 15 dollars that is a different amount depending on what dollar you are actually talking about.

Different countries have different sign languages. ASL is not the only sign language. Stop accusing deaf people of "faking knowing sign language" for not signing using ASL.

But remember: this is about optics. Donald's fanclub has been trying to convince the fence-sitters that No Kings is "unamerican" -- it's really fucking hard for that claim to hold up when the rally is full of the standard trappings of patriotism.