Donald Trump will soon have access to the NSA. If you need to say or do anything that a bigot like him would take issue with, please be safe. Do NOT speak about such things:
-through the Internet
-over the phone
-or even with a turned on phone in the room.
Now, more than ever, it's important that we learn about Internet privacy and keep in mind what a potential fascist dictator will do with the power granted to the ruler of the most powerful country in the 21st Century.
Think about what the FBI could use to mischaracterize you or prosecute you. Think about the various things you admit to on facebook which are actually illegal, and consider how such minor crimes might be used to imprison political dissenters.
Learn about Edward Snowden. Learn about Putin's Russia. Learn about PRISM. Learn about censorship in China and North Korea. Learn about the American system of prison slavery. Learn about Net Neutrality. Learn about historical state oppression. Learn about different economic systems like communism, syndicalism, and socialism. Learn about different forms of governance, like anarchism, direct democracy, and mutualism.
Open up Wikipedia and start reading about history, while we still have access to it. Wrap your head around the theory of how we can change the world from the abysmal state it's currently in because of capitalism and long-unchecked power concentration.
Read Robert Greene's 48 Laws of Power, Sun Tzu's The Art of War, or Miyamoto Musashi's Book of 5 Rings. Read whatever other books give you a better understanding of how people manipulate others. Learn about analytical ethics. Learn about cognitive biases. Learn about the Rise of the Third Reich.
Most importantly, be smart. If we are, in fact, looking at the rise of a genocidal maniac and a force of right-wing nationalists from rural America, which is a possibility supported by history, then we need to be many steps ahead of them. We have to consider the power of the American military. We have to think about how he brainwashes people so effortlessly, and we have to counteract those forces. We have to consider how he co-opts powerful institutions and large groups of people for unjust causes, and we have to consider how that can be safely, legally, and democratically reversed to buy us enough time to organize and create a Dual Power and a Dual Economy.
Stop falling for false rhetoric. Wake up and realize that incredible amounts of "progress" among the highly-socialized, cosmopolitan urban folk are easily reversed overnight with a simple resurgence of reactionary, conservative, right-wing, xenophobic, capitalist, nationalist zealotry in the places that don't get the same kind of attention from our government. Realize that the root causes of all this turmoil are always very simple: money and power. Realize that massive cultural paradigms have been being shaped for a huge length of time. Systems and institutions that are in place, cultural paradigms, and widespread beliefs, taboos, and norms are essentially investments of the oligarchs in a society that works for them. Almost every quality of our society works to keep them in power, and we have to recreate society so that it has qualities which work against keeping them in power.
Our government is extremely conservative--and extremely evil--right now. We have a lot to fear. We need to start thinking intelligently and planning actively. And we have to always be on the right side of the law, especially in our communications through recorded media. So fight for what's right while always staying safe. If you put yourself out of the fight by making stupid, risky decisions, you are putting others in danger. Your advocacy is a vital tool to your comrades, so preserve it and use it wisely.
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