Justice Department leadership is prepared to use its rule-making authority to declare transgender people as mentally ill and deprive them of their Second Amendment right to possess firearms, according to two Justice officials who shared internal discussions with CNN.

Deliberations at the highest levels of the DOJ follow the recent mass shooting at Annunciation Catholic Church in Minneapolis, an attack police say was carried out by a 23-year-old former student at the church’s school who may have been a transgender person or a de-transitioned individual. Two children were killed in the attack, and 21 others were injured.

  • gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de
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    7 hours ago

    i have had the impression for years now (at least since 2012, because that’s when i started observing) that the world in the US is deeply broken on a deeper level than the surface.

    superficially, the US is possibly close to a civil war, with trump deploying troops to cities, angry trump loyalists storming the capitol just a bit earlier, and such. but if you look deeper, the whole picture looks a lot darker.

    it’s not so much that people are as stupid as they pretend to be (only caring about epstein, neglecting their own financial situation, not caring about sustainability & having a future), instead it’s that a lot of people have emotional struggles that reach deep and keep them from making reasonable choices.

    i think a lot of people are just really really emotionally hurt. if you look at the typical people in rural areas, a lot are emotionally broken, feel abandoned by society, feel as if they’re left to rot in their tiny, abandoned villages, that anger channels to the coastline cities, where it’s supposedly better, and then you end up with a “owning the libs” situation where basically the rural population is trying to take petty revenge on the people living in the coast cities for living a better, more meaningful life than themselves.

    this can’t be cured by just changing the communication channels somewhat. it would need a deep and fundamental processing of the soul of people. it can’t be done overnight, and at this point, i’m worried that nobody actually tries to care for the people who feel left behind and abandoned at all. basically, the rich move on, undertaking their enterprises, leaving large parts of the country behind, unemployed and without meaning and purpose in life. i’m pretty sure we’ll see some civil revolts (which will be forcefully bashed by the police and such), and then we’ll see the development of parallel societies where you practically have large ghettos in cities which is essentially like a parallel universe.

    i think it’s for the better though if some parts of the country secede. it’s not possible to give employment to everyone*, and if these people can at least form their own societies, they’ll have integrity and self-determination, and that’s worth something.

    * in the year 2040, AI and automation have replaced a lot of jobs.

    • KnitWit@lemmy.world
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      6 hours ago

      The works of the roots of the vines, of the trees, must be destroyed to keep up the price, and this is the saddest, bitterest thing of all. Carloads of oranges dumped on the ground. The people came for miles to take the fruit, but this could not be. How would they buy oranges at twenty cents a dozen if they could drive out and pick them up? And men with hoses squirt kerosene on the oranges, and they are angry at the crime, angry at the people who have come to take the fruit. A million people hungry, needing the fruit- and kerosene sprayed over the golden mountains. And the smell of rot fills the country. Burn coffee for fuel in the ships. Burn corn to keep warm, it makes a hot fire. Dump potatoes in the rivers and place guards along the banks to keep the hungry people from fishing them out. Slaughter the pigs and bury them, and let the putrescence drip down into the earth.

      There is a crime here that goes beyond denunciation. There is a sorrow here that weeping cannot symbolize. There is a failure here that topples all our success. The fertile earth, the straight tree rows, the sturdy trunks, and the ripe fruit. And children dying of pellagra must die because a profit cannot be taken from an orange. And coroners must fill in the certificate- died of malnutrition- because the food must rot, must be forced to rot. The people come with nets to fish for potatoes in the river, and the guards hold them back; they come in rattling cars to get the dumped oranges, but the kerosene is sprayed. And they stand still and watch the potatoes float by, listen to the screaming pigs being killed in a ditch and covered with quick-lime, watch the mountains of oranges slop down to a putrefying ooze; and in the eyes of the people there is the failure; and in the eyes of the hungry there is a growing wrath. In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage.

      -The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck